A Dangerous Man
by Tajjas
Summary: Alex knew dangerous men. And Erik was one of them. Friendship/mentor fic set during First Class.
1. One Messed Up Cat

_Alex knew dangerous men. And Erik was one of them._

_Fair warning, after a few hours of trying to write Alex/Havok's actual backstory into this, I gave it up as far too headache-inducing to be worth it. There are still comic book details mixed in here and there, but I've given up on the timeline entirely. And there are also several things that I've made up entirely._

_General story warnings: Mentions of child abuse (later chapters) and some less-than-polite language (pretty much all chapters). And, like many others, I'm pretending that they spent more than a week training at the mansion._

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><p>Alex scowled at the unfamiliar door in front of him. Wherever he was, it was clearly <em>not<em> the kitchen. And he had no idea where he'd taken a wrong turn. Granted that his sense of direction had never been the greatest—he'd averaged getting lost three or four times per neighborhood way back when social services had actually bothered to try finding placements for him—but apparently after a couple years in a concrete cell it had dwindled to absolutely nothing. And the fact that this place was completely insane wasn't helping matters any. He was lucky that his room had a bathroom just across the hall, even if he did have to share it with Sean and Hank, or he'd probably have ended up pissing in random vases out of sheer desperation.

If he'd been using his brain, he would have stayed with Sean and the geek after their run this morning. Following the others was how he'd managed to get around thus far, and there was no reason that it wouldn't have kept working. Unfortunately, Hank had insisted on dragging Sean off to his lab, and although he was a little curious about how Hank had managed to acquire a lab in the thirty-six-ish hours since their arrival, Alex hadn't been interested in tagging along. But then Charles and Raven had left for town to do whatever else needed to be done to bring a place like this 'back up,' and Moira and Erik had scowled at each other and stalked off in opposite directions, and Alex had been left on his own.

He'd managed to get back to his room, mostly since the staircase by the front door led directly there—as long as he stopped on the right floor, anyway—but it appeared that the staircase at the other end of the hall that he'd _thought_ would take him straight back down to the kitchen didn't. And…well, now here he was. Wherever here was.

He kicked the heavy door in front of him and then turned, glaring up at the smug bastard sneering down at him from a framed portrait on the opposite wall. "So where's the damn kitchen, then?" Maybe he should have gone left—

"You're off by several turns and a flight of stairs," a dry voice said from immediately behind him.

Oh, hell. And not just because his directional incompetence had, once again, been totally and utterly confirmed. "Sorry," Alex muttered as he turned back around. Of all the doors in the place to kick, he managed to find Erik's. If he'd been trying, he'd _never_ have been able to manage that.

"Is it time for lunch?" Erik asked.

"Yeah. The, uh, the professor called on the intercom. I guess he and Raven just got back." He didn't bother to claim that he'd been coming to get Erik, not after Erik had already heard him wondering where the kitchen was.

"Mm. Stay there." Erik stepped back into his room, shutting the door again.

As opposed to what, sneaking into his room and making off with half his stuff? Alex almost asked, but then his sense of self-preservation kicked in and he bit back the words. Deliberately baiting the geek, sure, that was good fun, but harassing a man with 'I kill puppies, ask me how' all but stamped on his forehead? Not so much.

He shook his head and turned, leaning back against the wall beside the door. Alex was good at working the system. Working people. He'd never had much of a choice: once a kid was labeled an arsonist, no one bothered to ask questions when fires started around him, and not only had he been a scrawny little runt the first time they'd pitched him in juvie, he'd also had the unfortunate habit of torching things when he got upset. Building a reputation of too-tough-to-touch had been necessary. So he worked out daily and didn't hesitate to show off the results—he'd become an expert when it came to removing sleeves—talked big, and tried to keep it to himself when wasn't really as confident as he was acting. It was why he'd decked a guard in full view of the other inmates on his eighteenth birthday, right after he'd been transferred from juvie to the adult facility. Well, that and because _everyone_ was better off with him in solitary, but even if he'd been left in the general population with only the bruises inflicted by the other guards as evidence of what had happened, it would still have been worth it.

Erik, though, he was the kind of guy that even Alex knew better than to touch, no matter how much he felt the need to prove himself. Because people like him, they didn't give a rat's ass if they had a reputation or not. They _were_ tough enough to handle anyone and anything that might come after them. And from the way Erik acted, he probably enjoyed doing it, too. If it hadn't been for the professor, Alex would never have left the prison with him. Darwin—Alex forced down the twist of pain that came with that name; those memories was still too new, too raw for him to deal with them—had once described Erik as 'one messed up cat,' and Alex agreed wholeheartedly.

The door opened again, and Erik stepped out. "Follow me."

Alex stared for a moment and then shrugged and trailed him down the hall. It wasn't like he could get any more lost than he already was.

"Look at the statue," Erik ordered as they approached the staircase.

Alex glanced over at the plaster thing—he hoped it was plaster, anyway, although given the rest of the ridiculous crap in this place it was probably real marble—on the pedestal just off the stair rail. "Um…why?" He wasn't exactly an art connoisseur.

"This is the headless angel floor. Your room is several above this," he gestured at the stairs continuing upwards, "with the statue of an armless woman on the landing. Charles and Raven are one above this, on the floor marked by the statue of a woman missing the top of her skull. And the kitchen is one below this, on the floor with the one-handed gladiator. From what I've seen, there are identical statues on all of the staircases except the main one."

"Including being broken in the same way?" Alex had to ask as they started down the other side of the staircase.

"That's how they were made."

"That's twisted."

"They're famous works of art. Or at least small copies."

Alex thought he'd just stand by 'twisted,' all things considered—seriously, a _headless_ angel? He was pretty sure that Charles had the money to buy a whole one—but he kept his mouth shut as they reached the one-handed gladiator floor.

"Left at the gentleman in a skirt," Erik gestured at the painting in front of them, "left again at the woman wandering around in the woods with no clothing on, and then right at the large vase with the very…active…goats on it.."

This definitely wasn't the same way that he'd followed Sean and Hank down to the kitchen this morning, but Alex nodded at the instructions anyway. Navigating by the art—despite the fact that his only thoughts about any of it before had been a combination of 'wow, that's hideous' and 'please, God, don't let me break anything important'—seemed like a better option than the hallway-and-floor counting he'd been trying and failing at thus far.

"Ah, there you are," the professor said with a smile as the two of them entered the kitchen. "There was a great deal of feedback over the intercom, and I was beginning to fear that I hadn't reached either of you."

"It was probably mine that was causing trouble," Erik said, stepping past him to the counter to assemble himself a sandwich without even acknowledging the others gathered around the table. "All I could hear was static."

"I'll be sure to get that checked," Charles said with a slight nod. "I suppose it's good that you ran into Alex."

Erik dipped his head slightly.

Alex stared at his back for a moment as Hank made a completely predictable offer to Charles to check the intercom himself—the guy was such a geek—and then stepped up beside him. "Thanks," Alex muttered.

Aside from a twitch of one shoulder, Erik gave no indication that he'd heard, but for a potential puppy-killer that had been...really decent. It would have been embarrassing as all hell if Erik had told the others that Alex couldn't even get from his room to the kitchen on his own.


	2. Sharks With Fewer Teeth

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed. The next update will probably take a little longer, just because I do have other things I need to be working on, but at the moment this is in my head so who knows.  
><em>

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><p>"Alex."<p>

Alex broke off his argument with Sean—a completely pointless argument since Batman could totally kick Captain America's ass, but for some reason Sean just wouldn't let it go—and turned and looked back Erik, standing by the sink.

"Are you training with Charles again this afternoon?"

"No. He said something about maybe trying again tomorrow, but he wanted to pick up a couple more fire extinguishers first." It had sounded like a _really_ good idea to Alex; he might not be able to do as much damage letting his power loose in the metal tunnel as he could outside, but he could still do a lot. Although after his little demonstration this morning Hank had started babbling about measurements, and whatever those measurements were for the professor had been so interested that he'd gone to the lab with Hank rather than coming to lunch. Alex didn't plan to admit it to anyone, but he was a little worried about what they might be planning.

"Good," Erik said. "Come to my room when you're done eating. Don't bother getting changed." He didn't even wait for agreement, setting his newly rinsed dishes on the counter and leaving the kitchen.

"You're in trouble," Raven said in a sing-song voice.

Alex scowled at her. Sometimes he didn't understand how she and the professor could possibly be related. "Funny. Am I allowed to say 'Hell, no,' to him?"

"I wouldn't, if I were you." Sean's gaze, at least, was sympathetic. "Hey, look at it this way; at least you won't get a headache from standing around listening to me blow out more windows. I'm not sure where he's getting all the glass, but the professor wants me to work on my aim some more this afternoon."

"The guy has plastic dummies sitting in his basement," Alex pointed out. "I'm not asking where he gets anything." With a shake of his head, Alex downed his last sandwich in two bites and then pushed himself to his feet, tossing the paper napkin into the garbage. Neatly. Two points. "I'd better get going. If I don't show up at dinner, do me a favor and start looking for shallow graves."

Erik's door was standing partially open when Alex reached his room, but Alex remained in the hall anyway and knocked lightly on the door frame. "Hello?"

"Come in."

Like every other bedroom that Alex had seen in this place, there were random statues and artwork and crap scattered around everywhere and more pillows and blankets on the bed than any normal human could ever use. Unlike Alex's room, since the first thing he had done was move everything he could into the big-enough-to-be-a-room-all-on-its-own closet on the grounds that it would be a _little_ harder for him to accidentally break something if it was all out of sight, or even Sean and Hank's rooms since they'd at least spread their things out on the furniture, nothing in here looked like it had even been touched. In fact, if it hadn't been for the small bag sitting on the chest at the foot of the bed, he would have assumed that this room was still unoccupied.

"You didn't have any trouble getting here?" Erik asked, turning away from the window.

Alex shrugged. "One wrong turn." Well, one and a half, but he'd corrected himself on the second one before he'd taken two steps so he wasn't going to mention that. "I've been doing some exploring." Very carefully, because he didn't want to get so lost that the others had to send out a search party, but after a little bit of work he'd managed to get to Hank's lab and then Erik's room again. And then Raven's as well, but only because she'd been standing in the hall with her door half-open arguing with Charles about something when he'd turned the corner. Alex had noted the location but hadn't stuck around to listen.

"Good. Come with me."

Alex shook his head as he followed Erik out of his room and down the hall. Erik could hold actual conversations. Alex had heard him doing so a few times. But apparently the only person that he could hold them with was Charles—well, him and maybe Raven on occasion—because where the rest of them were concerned communication seemed to consist almost entirely of terse comments and blunt orders. But Erik had helped him out the other day, so despite what he'd said to Sean, Alex figured that he owned him enough to at least see what he wanted. Curiosity got the better of him, even in the face of Erik's silence, as Erik led him down an unfamiliar stairway. "Where are we going?"

"Outside, somewhere with enough room to spar."

Alex froze in tracks. "Spar? As in me against you? Are you insane?" Which might not have been the best thing to say, but there was no way that he could stay quiet after a statement like that. He was a good fighter, sure—he'd never had much of a choice—but there was a big difference between being a good fighter and being someone who moved like Erik did. Hell, Alex would bet almost anything that Erik was carrying a weapon somewhere on him even now, despite the fact that he was wearing the same sort of pocket-less sweat suit that Alex was.

"I'm sure that that would depend entirely on who you ask. Keep walking."

"Why?" Alex asked, even as he trailed Erik across the lawn. Unless he managed to get a perfectly aimed blast off, he was doomed. And even if he didn't expect his aim to be worth anything, _trying_ to incinerate someone who was supposed to be on his side seemed pretty damn counterproductive.

"Because like it or not, your powers are completely offensive."

"Gee, thanks." More teeth than necessary made an appearance at his immediate retort. Alex had heard Sean say once that he'd seen sharks with fewer teeth than Erik had, and he found himself agreeing.

"Should you need to subdue someone intact, you're going to have to do so physically," Erik continued. "So you'd best learn how."

"I can fight just fine."

Erik gave a decidedly derisive snort and then took a look around and nodded, pushing his sleeves up past his elbows and shifting into a ready position. "Then prove it. No powers."

"Why aren't the others here?" Alex asked, forcing himself not to step back. "Shouldn't they learn this too?"

"Sean's not here partly because I don't feel like getting shrieked at at the moment, with or without him hitting sonic levels, and partly because I guarantee that Charles will have him knocking people unconscious with his voice within a week. You can't do that. I will sort Charles out better later, but he's going to have to be the one to teach Hank because I haven't got the patience for it." He grimaced. "And unless she fights morphed, which she should not, Raven is better suited to someone like Moira's style than mine." He reached down abruptly, pulling a knife out from a leg sheath, and Alex only had a moment to tense even further before he tossed it neatly aside, embedding it in the ground fifteen feet away. "Not today, I don't think."

Not _ever_, if Alex had anything to say about it. And he wasn't overly thrilled to learn that he'd been right about Erik being armed.

Erik's expression hardened as he turned back to Alex. "Now either attack me or I'm going to attack you."

Well, there was incentive. Why hadn't he stayed in prison again? "Erik, I can't always contr—"

Erik apparently decided that he'd given Alex enough time because he lunged forward, and Alex reacted with all the speed of someone who'd spent half his life bouncing between foster homes and detention facilities.

It was entirely his reflexes that saved him from Erik's initial attack, and then his first instinct was to put some distance between them so he had room to work. He normally didn't mind grappling, but it tended to be a bad idea when the person that he was fighting had both weight and muscle on him. The kick aimed at Erik's knee was less a serious attack and more a feint to get himself that space, but unfortunately Erik seemed to realize that, and Alex only narrowly avoided a backhand. Better that than a punch, at least in terms of damage inflicted, but it still wasn't something that Alex wanted to experience today, and the punch he threw at Erik's jaw had real power behind it. Unfortunately, Erik was faster than he expected, and he stumbled when his target suddenly wasn't where it was supposed to be. Erik 'helped' him the rest of the way to the ground with a hard shove, and Alex swore as one wrist rolled painfully and he ate dirt. And then he grabbed a handful and spun on Erik. If he wanted a fight, fine. He hadn't said that Alex had to fight fair.

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><p>Alex blinked up at the sky. It was a very pretty sky. At least up until Erik stepped into view and announced that it was his turn, anyway.<p>

It had turned out that Erik knew how to fight dirty too—which, when he thought about it, _really_ shouldn't have come as a surprise—and he knew way more tricks than Alex did. Which also shouldn't have come as a surprise. Alex had managed to win exactly one out of the million or so matches they'd had before Erik had finally called a halt and switched to more directed teaching, and there was something seriously disturbing about the fact that the most approving look he'd gotten from Erik all day had been for throwing that first handful of dirt in his face.

He had learned a few things, though, as much as he didn't want to admit it, and he was learning more now. For the most part by having whatever Erik wanted to teach him demonstrated on him, which Alex could definitely have done without, but Erik was also pretty tolerant about allowing Alex to try those new moves on Erik in return so it kind of evened out. And so far Alex had managed to refrain from getting angry or panicked enough to start blasting, which he was considering a victory too.

Of course, when Erik was allowing Alex to practice new moves on him, it frequently led to Erik deciding to demonstrate that said new moves had a counter. Generally an unpleasant one, which was the main reason that Alex didn't want to get up and take his turn throwing Erik on the ground a couple times. He was getting _tired_.

Erik stared down at him, managing to look amused without also managing to look like he planned to bite anyone for once, and after a moment he offered a hand. "Try it once, and then we'll go back inside. We probably shouldn't show up at dinner looking like we've spent the afternoon rolling in dirt anyway."

"We mostly have," Alex pointed out, but he let Erik pull him back up anyway. Erik shifted, one arm coming around Alex's chest to pin him in the setup for this newest throw, and Alex blinked at the row of numbers suddenly directly in front of him, carved into the inside of Erik's forearm. He'd seen flashes of _something_ on Erik's arm several times today, but he'd been way too busy trying not to get clobbered to pay it much attention.

"Ready?"

Erik's question brought him back to reality—he'd learned the first time that he'd better really be ready when he said so or Erik would make him pay for it—and he reached up to grip Erik's arm. "Ready."

Erik pulled, he twisted, and Erik rolled over his hip correctly, but somehow Erik had managed to get a grip on him as well because he was falling too, and he had no time to catch himself. He grunted as he landed on his stomach on the ground. Again.

"I'll show you that one next time," Erik promised.

"Oh, joy," Alex muttered. Although he'd kind of suspected that this wasn't the last lesson that he was going to get.

Erik pushed himself smoothly to his feet, one arm sweeping outward, and the knife that he'd tossed into the grass earlier leapt easily into his palm. Alex once again decided that he was _never_ getting into a knife fight with Erik, even in the name of practice, if he had any choice in the matter. Erik tucked the knife back into his leg sheath as Alex got to his feet as well, and then they matched paces back to the house-mansion-whatever in silence.

Erik left him when they reached the second floor with a brusque, "You did well enough," and Alex couldn't help but stare after him for a moment before continuing up to his room.

"What happened to you?" Sean exclaimed as Alex came around the corner, his voice sounding more than a little hoarse to Alex's ears.

"Erik." Alex couldn't exactly blame Sean for his shock; the sweat suit that had only been a little singed at lunchtime today was now pretty much covered in dirt and grass stains, and Alex wasn't sure if he would ever be able to scrub it clean.

Hank stuck his head out of the bathroom at that, staring for a moment, and then, "I'll get you a first aid kit. Uh, Sean, here, try this."

"Don't worry about it," Alex said with a shake of his head as Sean accepted the glass of whatever it was that Hank held out. "I'm all right. Kind of a mess, but all right."

Hank looked almost as disbelieving as Sean, and Alex rolled his eyes. "Just say that I get the shower next, okay?"

"No arguments there, you're starting to make a mess of the floor," Sean said.

"Wh—damn it." He'd been hoping _not_ to do that, but apparently leaving his shoes by the door hadn't been enough. He grabbed his jeans and a t-shirt out of his room quickly, wondering as he did so if there were laundry facilities somewhere that he could use because he didn't have that much clothing and he didn't want to have to start washing what he did have in the bathtub. Sean and Hank's voices were receding down the hallway when he headed for the bathroom, Sean complaining about the taste of whatever Hank had given him, but Alex was more interested in getting cleaned up than paying them any attention.

Since the other two had left, he took a longer shower than he normally would have, but according to the clock, it still wasn't yet time for dinner when he'd finished. He flopped down on his—stripped down, since most of the pillows and blankets had followed the statuary into the closet—bed and stared up at the ceiling.

It turned out that he didn't have as many bruises as he'd expected given the number of times that he'd been knocked down and pinned, and it wasn't because they were the deep kind that took forever to become visible, either. Oh, there were definitely a few scattered around, but they were mostly on his arms and legs rather than on his face or back or stomach, which meant that Erik had been being a lot more careful than Alex had realized. Well, that or that Alex's defensive skills were way better than he'd thought, but Alex wasn't harboring a lot of illusions there. It was kind of surprising, especially considering that Alex had been doing his best to land blows wherever he damn well could. Erik might not be much of a conversationalist, but apparently he wasn't such a horrible teacher, either.

And there were those numbers to think about. Alex rubbed the corresponding spot on his forearm lightly. He wasn't stupid. Sure, he'd been all of twelve the last time that he'd been able to finish an entire year at a real school, but it hadn't been because he wasn't capable of it. And while he'd been not-quite three when the war had ended, and Dad had been stationed in the Pacific back then anyway, in ten years of living on military bases he'd heard some things. Bad things. Nightmare-inducing things that he very much doubted that any soldier had ever intended for a kid to overhear. Add in a few facts that even the hit-or-miss history classes in juvie had managed to cover, and…well, a string of numbers tattooed on a man's arm like that didn't mean anything good. Especially since Erik didn't look _that_ much older than he was, so he had to have been just a kid at the time.

The intercom came to life with an announcement about dinner at about the same time that Alex decided that it would be best to just forget about what he'd seen unless Erik himself brought it up, and he pushed himself to his feet. Lunch had been a long time ago, and he was hungry.


	3. A Flying Fuselage

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed. This won't get out of my head, despite the other stories that really need to be getting finished now, so you get another chapter._

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><p>A light knock at his door drew Alex's eyes away from the rain falling outside his window, and he turned to find Hank standing in the doorway. It had been a pretty slow day—they'd managed to finish a their run before breakfast, but outside work had been curtailed afterwards on the grounds that none of them had 'proper rain gear' and when the weather hadn't gotten any better by lunch, the professor had declared the rest of the day a holiday—but he hadn't minded. He'd heard Sean complaining about nothing to do, at least until Raven had dragged him off somewhere, but for someone who'd become used to spending twenty-three hours a day alone in a cell, it had been nice to have some time all to himself.<p>

"Do you have a few minutes?" Hank asked when he realized that he had Alex's attention.

Or not. "Why?" he asked. He was obviously free, but he wasn't sure why Hank would be seeking him out. And there was no way that he was agreeing to anything blind.

"I have an idea for something that might help you control your plasma blasts, but I need solid data to confirm my calculations. If you'd let me take some measurements, it would be a great help."

Alex frowned and then shrugged. "Yeah, okay, I guess." He had no idea how Hank even planned to measure his plasma blasts, never mind control them, but at this point, he was willing to try almost anything. "What do you need me to do?"

"Well, I've built a set of sensors that should record everything necessary, but you'll have to wear them while using your powers for me to get accurate readings."

"Okay," Alex repeated, pushing himself up off the window seat. His ability to generate the blasts had never been a problem.

The walk to Hank's lab was made in silence. Hank was somebody that Alex just didn't get. It wasn't that he disliked the guy or anything…he was a total geek, sure, but he wasn't a jackass about it the way that some of Alex's 'tutors' had been. When he used technobabble, it was pretty obvious that it was because that was how he was used to speaking, not because he was trying to rub other people's faces in the fact that he was smarter than they were. But it was more when he wasn't being a geek that he bothered Alex because the guy just _backed off_ constantly. One good 'fuck you' out of him—hell, at this point Alex would happily accept 'screw you' or even 'get lost'—and Alex would have a whole lot more respect for him. And his attitude towards his own mutation was weird too; it wasn't like funny shaped feet came with the danger of incinerating anyone.

Erik, Charles, and Moira were in the lab arguing about something when Alex and Hank arrived—well, it looked like Erik and Moira were arguing while Charles tried to play peacemaker—but they broke it off before Alex could get a sense of what the argument was about. Probably not what they were having for dinner given that Moira brushed past him and Hank without a word and stalked off down the hallway a moment later. Alex wasn't sure if that meant that she'd lost the argument or if that was just her default reaction to having to deal with Erik.

Hank led him over to a side table where a strange looking box with a panel of lights and buttons on the front rested. It was attached to a large coil of wires divided into three sections, and the free end of each wire was melded to a flat strip of metal. "If you would have a seat," Hank said, indicating the stool beside the table. "And would you mind taking your shirt off? That would make this much easier."

"Whatever." Alex pulled it off over his head, tossing it onto the table.

Hank attached the first set of wires to Alex's forehead and neck, the flat pieces of metal staying neatly in place where he pressed them. It felt more than a little weird having them all attached but it didn't hurt so Alex didn't say anything. The next set of wires went on his chest, and he tensed as Hank paused at the thin scar that ran from just under one arm to just under the other, only a few inches below the base of his throat.

"Forgot to duck," he said flatly, before Hank could ask. Hank nodded slightly and didn't press, although there was a barely-audible intake of breath when he moved to attach the last set of wires to Alex's back. The collection of scars was a little more extensive there, Alex knew, but at least Hank managed to refrain from asking questions.

"May I ask what happened here?"

Well, for the most part, apparently. The one he was looking at was by far the worst—and the oldest—of the lot, the only one easily visible from any distance, and, to be fair, its placement probably did make attaching the last sensor difficult since it rested directly over his left shoulder blade immediately opposite the sensor that Hank had just attached. "I was attacked by a flying fuselage," he said in the same flat tone.

"You could have just said 'no,'" Hank said after a moment.

Alex started to shrug, realized that that would probably disrupt some of the sensors already in place, and settled for keeping his mouth shut as he felt Hank attach that sensor a little higher than its counterpart on the other side.

"All right, that should do it," Hank said, stepping back. "I think you're ready."

"Wait, you don't want me to do it in _here,_ do you?"

"No!" Hank looked almost as horrified as Alex felt. "No, we'll go down to the bunker. I just wanted to put the sensors on in here since the light is so much better."

"Oh. Okay." Alex nodded. For a moment, he'd been afraid that Hank had gone insane. "Is there a fire extinguisher somewhere?"

"I have one, and so does Erik," Charles said, and Alex realized that he and Erik had never left. Well, whatever. Although Erik was scowling furiously, which wasn't exactly reassuring, and the professor was frowning as well. What the heck had Erik and Moira been arguing about?

Alex shook his head slightly and stood, grabbing his shirt automatically and waiting for Hank to pick up his box. There was no mirror in here, but he could just imagine what he must look like with wires attached everywhere. He only hoped that they didn't start falling off when he started walking.

He was sure that they made a strange looking procession down to the metal-walled tunnel—one guy with wires everywhere, one with the other end of those wires attached to a box, and two men with fire extinguishers—but the wires did stay in place. Alex tossed his shirt down outside the doors and stepped inside when he reached the bunker, taking a couple deep breaths to get ready. And then he realized that Hank was unrolling the coil of wires, clearly planning to keep the box outside with him while Alex, attached to the wire ends, used his powers inside. Which meant that they wouldn't be shutting the door the whole way.

"I don't know if that's such a great idea," he warned. The cracked door wouldn't leave much of gap, but it wouldn't _take_ much of one, either.

"I only need you to fire a few blasts," Hank said. "And we'll wait well out of range down the corridor."

"Maybe you should just put that in here with me. If you put it behind me, I probably won't hit it." Hell, if they put it where the mannequin had been the other day, directly in front of him, he could almost guarantee a miss.

Hank curled one arm protectively around his machine. "It's minimal risk."

"If it looks like any fire will come out, I'll slam the door," Erik offered. "That'll just sever the wires, right?"

"Yes," Hank agreed after a moment.

"No chance of electrocution?"

"Of course not!"

Hank was looking horrified again, and Alex felt some relief. Not that the possibility of electrocution had occurred to him before Erik had said anything, but it was good to know that it wasn't a risk. He still wasn't overly thrilled with the plan since if a full-force plasma blast hit the cracked door, he wasn't sure that there would be enough _time_ to shut it, but he'd be firing forward as best he could and the door was off to one side behind him. And Hank clearly didn't plan to leave his precious machine in the bunker with Alex. "Fine," he agreed.

Hank joined Alex in the bunker again long enough to check all of the connections one last time, and then he stepped back out and shut the door carefully, leaving just enough space for the wires to run. "Whenever you're ready," Hank called through the crack in the door. "A single blast first, please."

"All right, here goes. Stand back." Alex clenched his fists, rolling his upper body, and his skin flashed hot just before a circle of plasma leapt out of him. It flew forward and then arced left, careening off one wall and then dissipating against the opposite in a flare of fire.

"Good enough?" he asked.

"Outstanding," Hank said. His voice was harder to hear now, obviously coming from some distance away from the door. "And for the next test, could you generate a burst? Perhaps ten or fifteen in a row?"

"With the door open? That's a _really_ bad idea. He could generate that many no problem, but…. "After the first few, they start going everywhere."

"How many do you think you can fire in a row?" Charles asked. "Under control?"

Under control. Right. None of them seemed to get how this worked for him. "I can probably manage three or four that will go forward," he said after a minute. "Is that good enough?"

Hank started to say something, but the professor's, "That would be fine," drowned him out, and Alex nodded.

"All right. In three, two, one, _firing_." Like the single blast, his first three blasts started forward but veered off randomly to one side or the other, while the fourth hit the wall nearly beside him, and he forced himself to stop. "Is that enough?"

"That's excellent," Hank called back.

The door swung open, and Alex wasn't surprised to see the professor entering first with a fire extinguisher. Erik came in behind him, and the two of them began putting out the flames.

"Am I allowed to take these off now?" he asked as Hank followed them in, indicating the wires on his face and chest.

"Let me do that, if you don't mind." Hank requested. "We may need to use them again."

Alex held still as he began to pull the flat bits of metal free. "So did you get what you wanted?"

"I'll need to transfer my results into the computer to check, but from what I could tell, the readings came through perfectly." Hank coiled the wires quickly, looping them over his shoulder, and Alex followed him out of the bunker. "With those, I should be able to design a harness that allows you to focus your powers."

"Nice." Alex shrugged his shirt on quickly. He kind of wanted to ask what, exactly, Hank had been measuring, but he probably wouldn't understand what Hank told him anyway so he didn't bother. "For a bozo, anyway."

Hank looked away, but before Alex could say anything else—like 'grow a damn spine'—Erik and the professor exited the bunker.

"That's that, then," the professor said, pushing the door closed again. He set his fire extinguisher aside as Erik did the same, and then Hank picked up his machine and the four of them started back up the staircase.

They were halfway there when there was a deafening roll of thunder, audible even underground, and then everything went black. Alex froze in place. It was an automatic defensive reaction, one that was justified when he heard Hank stumble and yelp.

"Oh, dear," the professor murmured. "A moment, please."

Alex wasn't sure who he was speaking to, but he was okay with standing still so he kept his mouth shut. It wasn't just dark, it was _black_, in the absolutely no light, just-hit-my-own-nose-because-I-can't-see-my-hand-in-front-of-my-face, sense. He knew that the professor and Hank were just ahead of him and Erik just behind, but it felt as though he was completely alone.

_Can everyone hear me? _the professor's voice echoed in his mind. _It seems that we've suffered a power failure, and if the generator hasn't started up, it very likely means that the fuel supply has run dry. I will call someone to restock it tomorrow but since, as Raven can attest, power failures often take some time to get fixed this far out in the country, may I suggest that we all meet in the library? There should still be a supply of candles in there._

Alex's initial thought—where the hell is the library?—was interrupted by a map appearing in his head, an overlay of what he recognized was the first floor. Unfortunately, aside from the kitchen and Hank's lab, he didn't recognize very many of the references. Two studies, whatever a conservatory was, a sunroom….

_Raven suggests that I go by the kitchen and pick up s'more supplies and we'll call that dinner, _Charles added after a moment. _I think I'll grab a few other things as well, but if someone wouldn't mind getting more firewood, that would be helpful. It's stacked in the mud room._

Adding 'mud room' to Alex's list of 'What the hell is that?', or, in this case, 'Why the hell do you need one of those?', but Erik spoke before he could say anything.

"I'll get some."

_Excellent._

There was rustling as someone, probably the professor, started moving again. A second set of footsteps resumed immediately after, these a bit more hesitant, and Alex reached out to put a hand on the wall to orient himself before he began to climb as well.

There was just enough ambient light filtering in through the windows when they reached the main halls to keep him from running into Hank or taking out any of the art, but if Hank hadn't turned into the lab to put his machine away, Alex wouldn't have known where it was. He continued down the hall after Charles—if nothing else, he could 'help' with the food supplies—until a hand on his shoulder made him start. He only narrowly avoided planting an elbow in Erik's stomach before he realized who it had to be, but he didn't even bother to hide his glare. As invisible as it probably was in the darkness.

"Two of us can carry more wood than one."

"Oh. Okay." Alex didn't care who he followed as long as he managed to get to the library somehow so he turned and trailed Erik down the side corridor. And then around several turns, to the point where he was starting to think that they must be about to end up right back where they'd started. Except that when Erik opened a door at the end of the hall, they entered a small room that Alex had never seen before. There was an exterior door in the room as well, and with a shake of his head, Alex knelt and began loading some of the barely-visible split logs lining one wall into his arms. "Do you _ever_ get lost?"

"That would depend on how you define 'lost,' but in general, no."

Alex suspected that Erik was smiling as he gathered his own armload of logs, but there was no way to tell whether it was the shark version or the normal version in the dim light.

"I don't always know where I'm going, but I've never had trouble getting back to where I've already been," Erik continued. "Always knowing where north—magnetic north—is helps."

"Oh. That's useful."

"Very. Are you ready?"

Alex stood, checking the weight of the wood. "Yeah."

Erik led the way back into the house, and Alex concentrated on following him and not running into anything along the walls. Erik was moving more slowly now too; he probably wasn't any more interested than Alex was in tripping and dropping an armload of firewood.

"You weren't being sarcastic earlier, were you?" Erik asked as they walked.

"What?"

"The scars on your back really are from a fuselage."

"The bad one over my shoulder blade and a couple of the smaller ones, yeah," Alex admitted. He saw Erik's head turn back towards him and shrugged slightly. He hadn't expected anyone to ask—most people were like Hank and assumed that he was lying when he said things like that—but it wasn't like it was a secret. The whole thing was probably already written down in some CIA file somewhere anyway. "My dad was a pilot. Air Force. A couple weeks after we were transferred down to Virginia, he took us up one day. Not in one of the jets or anything, just the little Mosquito. Nothing we hadn't done a hundred times before, except that this time maybe half an hour in, something went wrong. One minute Mom was telling me a story about a river we were flying over and the next it was like one whole side of the plane was on fire. The chutes…Mom only managed to grab one pack before the rest were incinerated. Cloth, you know."

"They put it on you," Erik said after a moment. It wasn't exactly a question, and his back was to Alex as they walked, but Alex nodded anyway.

"They put it on me, strapped Scotty to my chest, and flung us out right before the flames hit the fuel tanks. It deployed pretty much immediately, but I got hit with some shrapnel before we cleared the wreckage."

"Scotty?"

"My little brother."

"Is he a mutant too? Where is he?"

"Don't know."

Erik stopped this time to look back at him.

"They split us up." Alex shrugged. "He was only seven months old, and cute little babies have a much better chance of getting adopted if they don't have ten year old brothers attached."

"What happens to the ten year old brothers?" Erik asked after a minute.

He shrugged again. He'd managed just fine on his own.

* * *

><p><em>Author's notes: Yes, I know that Scott is supposed to be Alex's older brother. Yes, I know that they were supposed to be in Alaska when the plane went down. Yes, I know that the Shi'ar were supposed to be involved. Yes, I know that the math does not work well <em>at all_. _

_To me, at least, making Scott close to Charles' and Erik's ages would mess things up even worse than _First Class_ already did (I liked the movie, but all of these characters already _had_ backstories, and for those of us who know them, it's a little crazy-making). Along the same lines, I refuse to make Alex Scott's father even though those numbers do work marginally better. I don't think Charles and Erik went all the way to Alaska hunting Alex (plus putting him in Virginia helps me later in the story), and I'm not touching the Shi'ar with a ten-foot pole. And the math in the X-Men movies is lousy in general, so as much as it's driving the engineer in me mad to do it, Alex's and Scott's ages are in the bucket of things I've given up on reconciling._


	4. Trying to Hula Hoop

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed. Real life is killing me at the moment, but I do still write when I get the chance._

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><p>Fortunately for Alex's peace of mind—what had happened to him and Scotty might not be a secret any more than the crash was, but it wasn't exactly topping his list of favorite subjects, either—Erik said nothing else as he turned around and started walking again.<p>

The library was only a few more turns away, and despite the fact that there were only two or three logs on the fire, the light was still bright enough that it took Alex's eyes a few moments to adjust.

"Oh, there you are," Charles greeted, smiling as they entered. "I was starting to think that I was going to have to send out a search party. Just put those logs in there please," he indicated a bin beside the fireplace, "and help yourselves to whatever you'd like for dinner."

It was mostly sandwich supplies, Alex noted as he glanced at the side table, sandwich supplies and a jug of what looked like lemonade, but there was also a collection of chocolate and marshmallows and graham crackers beside the jug so s'mores were obviously going to happen too. He grinned slightly. He hadn't had s'mores in _years_.

"Alex, drop that and give me a hand," Sean called from the shadows.

Alex put his armload of wood in the bin on top of Erik's and then went back to help Sean move a second couch from the wall to a spot near the fire as Erik built the fire up further.

The couch wasn't particularly heavy, and with a little bit of work he and Sean managed to drag it into place near the other, forming a vaguely triangular shape in front of the fireplace and shoving the uncomfortable looking chairs aside in the process. Unfortunately, by the time they'd made their sandwiches, Erik and the professor had claimed it. And the first couch was already occupied with Moira on one end and Hank on the other and Raven sitting so close to Hank that she was practically in his lap.

"Hey, no fair!" Sean objected when he noticed the seating arrangements.

Alex ignored Erik's smirk, debating for a moment taking the spot between him and the professor before grabbing a pillow off one of the chairs and flopping down on the floor. They really should have seen that one coming. But there was plenty of space between the couches, and the rug was comfortable enough, and at least this way he didn't have to worry about spilling his drink on the furniture. Of course, the rug was probably _still_ ten times as expensive as anything he'd ever dared to eat on before, but….

Sean joined him on the floor after a little more completely ineffective grumbling, and then silence fell as they inhaled the sandwiches and turned for the s'more supplies.

Hank and Raven ended up joining them on the floor in front of the fire, and Raven produced four metal skewers with wooden handles for their marshmallows. Alex stared at his for a minute, wondering why, exactly, someone made professional marshmallow-roasting skewers when normal people just used sticks, and then decided that it didn't matter and started loading his up.

Banshee squeaked—it definitely didn't qualify as a full scream, for which Alex was very grateful—knocking a burning log aside and revealing a nice set of coals for them to start with, and Alex shoved his marshmallows into position before the others could take up the whole space.

"Have you always been able to do that?" Raven asked Sean. "I mean, I know I've always looked like…me, and I don't really remember not being able to change, but did you used to take out ceilings when you were a little baby or what?"

"Me? Nah," Sean grinned, shaking his head. "No, I was probably thirteen or so the first time it happened. I was horsing around with a couple of my cousins, and Tom twisted my arm back a little too hard. I screamed, and Mom's china cabinet just went _blam_." He waved his free hand. "Caved in the doors and smashed the glasses and the plates and everything. Talk about a mess. At first Tom and Danny just sort of stared at me, but then I think all of us realized how dead we were going to be when Mom found out—we weren't even supposed to be playing inside—so we sort of put it out of our minds and spent the next three hours trying to put the thing back together. It didn't work, of course, and man, you should have heard _her_ scream when she saw what we'd done. And she's not even a mutant. But after that I started playing around with it sometimes, and…well, here I am."

Alex pulled his marshmallows clear of the file and built two s'mores quickly before debating what to do with his remaining marshmallow. He'd apparently calculated that just a little bit—

The fork shifted backwards suddenly, pulled out of his hands, and he would have jumped if it hadn't occurred to him that Erik was behind him. The fork returned a moment later, devoid of marshmallow, and he decided that it wasn't worth arguing about. At least Erik hadn't taken his finished s'mores.

"How about you, Professor, when did you start reading minds?" Hank asked as he assembled his own snack.

"I'm afraid that I haven't any interesting story to tell," Charles said with a shake of his head. "I honestly can't recall a time when I couldn't read the thoughts of those around me. It's certainly become stronger over the years, and the ability to project didn't manifest until I was perhaps eight or nine, but in my case, it was more a matter of realizing over time that others _couldn't_ do what I could to know that I was different. Oh, no thank you, Raven, but perhaps Moira would like one?"

"No, thank you, that's a little too much sugar for me."

There was no such thing, as far as Alex was concerned, but his mouth was too full of melted chocolate and marshmallow to object.

"What about you, Hank?" Raven asked. "I'm guessing you were in the same boat as me."

"Yes, I was born with my mutation," Hank agreed. "It's…I do have vague memories of visiting several different doctors when I was very young, which seemed strange because we had very little money, but nothing ever came of it. Probably because there was no money for surgery which I assume they all recommended. And then one day that I heard my mother complaining to one of her friends that when other parents said that their children were climbing the walls, they didn't mean it literally. That's when I realized that something was genuinely…different…about me."

"Your turn, Alex," Sean asked as he loaded up his stick with another set of marshmallows. "Let me guess, you were trying to hula-hoop, took out half your school, and the other kids worshiped you for months." There was a moment of silence from everyone, and then, "What? I totally would have."

That got laughs from the others, and Alex was tempted to just go with it, but his lack of laughter had apparently given him away, because Raven elbowed him lightly. "Come on, spill."

"There's not a lot to tell. I torched a guy who tried to gut me." He put the two marshmallows that he'd been about to put on his stick back into the bag. He suddenly didn't feel like eating any more tonight.

"Uh, no, that sounds like a lot to tell," Raven said after a minute.

"I concur," Hank said.

"Yeah, what do you mean, 'gut you'?" Sean asked.

He should have known better than to think that he'd get away that easily. "Your marshmallows are burning," he warned.

_Do you want me to end this?_ a voice whispered at the back of his mind.

The professor, Alex realized after a moment—he should have realized that immediately—and he shook his head slightly. As long as he'd said this much, he might as well finish. If he didn't, they'd corner him and ask again later. If he'd had any brains at all, he'd have laughed about hula-hoops and had it done with. "I was about twelve," he started, shifting to stare into the fire. "I'd taken Haley—my foster sister—to the park that afternoon."

"Why'd you have a foster sister?" Sean interrupted.

"Because I was in foster care." How did he think people ended up with foster siblings? "Anyway, I got into a pickup game with a couple other guys there and lost track of time, and it wasn't until it started raining that I realized that we were going to be late. It's…my foster parents were a little crazy about being in on time. Their son Todd had been murdered about a year before—found sliced and diced in an alley a couple days after he went missing—and…well, crazy, like I said. We weren't supposed to use the alleys either after what had happened, but everybody knew that they was the fastest way to get anywhere so when I grabbed Haley and took off, that's the way I went. And then all of a sudden I go from dragging Haley along to lying on the ground feeling like my head had been cracked open."

"Somebody hit you?" Raven guessed.

"Yeah. It was this guy—a kid, really, he couldn't have been more than fifteen or sixteen—that I'd seen around the neighborhood a few times before. He dropped the two-by-four when he saw me looking at him and pulled out a knife." Alex shook his head. "I don't even think knife is the right word for it it; I didn't know that blades that big _existed_ outside of the movies. But, anyway, it's pouring rain, Haley's crying, I'm trying to get up but my head is bleeding like crazy and I'm about ready to puke, and this nut job is waving a knife around telling me how Todd had screamed when he'd cut him."

"Todd as in your foster parents' murdered son?"

Trust the geek to pick up on that. Alex nodded. "Yeah. And then he goes from telling me about how Todd screamed when he cut him to about how I was going to scream when he cut _me_, and I just grabbed Haley's hand and tried to run. I didn't get far; like I said, my head hurt really bad and he barely had to touch me to put me on the ground again. So the next time I managed to get up, I took a swing at him. Which didn't do anything either. And then he cut me, like he said he was going to." Alex drew a finger across the upper portion of his chest, and when he glanced sideways, he was unsurprised to see comprehension in Hank's eyes. "And I screamed, like he said I was going to. And then all of a sudden I felt hot, and there was a flash of red, and then I must have closed my eyes because the next thing I know there's this _horrible_ smell. I can't even describe how bad it was. When I opened my eyes again, he was…well, half of him was here and burning," he gestured to one side, "and the other half of him was here and burning." He gestured to the other side. "With a couple other flaming bits scattered around. I mean, he was two feet away from me. Even I can't miss at that range."

"Did anyone ever find out?" Raven asked.

"Oh, yeah. After I saw him on the ground, I started screaming again and couldn't stop. I guess someone must have heard, and like I said, everyone knew the alleys were dangerous. By the time the siren stopped there must have been a dozen policemen standing around me."

"What did they say?" Sean asked.

"Well, according to the official report, he was hit by a freak lightening strike." Alex snorted. "Act of God."

"I don't think lightning cuts people in half," Raven said.

"Yeah, well, tell them that. Besides, he was mostly ash at that point, and what else were they going to say? That a half-hysterical twelve year old with a giant knot on the side of his head cut him with magical red light like I was insisting? And Haley was making even less sense than me. Hell, I don't think they wouldn't even have listened to me when I told them what he said about Todd if the knife hadn't been right _there_."

"At least your foster parents must have been happy," Raven said after a moment. "I mean, that the guy that killed their son was gone."

"Mostly I think they were just pissed off that I survived and Todd didn't." Alex shook his head and then shifted awkwardly and looked back at Erik. He was the only person—well, except for Moira, obviously—who hadn't spoken yet tonight, and Alex wanted their attention _off_ him. "So what about you, when did you first use your powers?"

Erik stared back at him for a moment and then pushed himself up out of his chair and walked out of the room.

"Yes, I think it's probably time that we all turned in," the professor said after a moment. "Everyone may feel free to take a candle, if you wish, but please make sure that you blow it out before you go to sleep. If we haven't power back by the morning—"

"We get ice cream for breakfast," Raven cut in.

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><p><em>Leaving out some stuff with Sinister, Alex's background is basically correct here. Less so with regards to the others, but I tried to work in what I could.<em>


	5. A Day for Conversation

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed._

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><p>When Alex awoke the next morning, the rain had stopped and there were a few streaks of sunlight coming through the clouds, but the electricity was still out and neither Erik nor Charles put in an appearance for the morning run. He was half-tempted to turn around and go back to bed until breakfast as Sean was threatening to do, but Hank was already stretching out, and while if it was geek-type stuff, Alex would have been perfectly fine with the geek overshadowing him, he did have something of a reputation to maintain when it came to the physical stuff. Of course, if he could convince Hank to quit being such a goody two-shoes for once….<p>

"Good morning," Hank said abruptly, brightening as he straightened.

Alex frowned, twisting to find Raven hurrying up to them. "Hey."

"Hey," she returned, her smile of greeting obviously for Hank even if her words were directed at him. "I'm glad you're still here; I was afraid you'd all left without me."

"Where's the professor?" Sean asked.

"He and Erik left to get some fuel for the generator. Something about wanting to get there early, just in case the power outage lasts through more than just today. Which, it might, out here." She shook her head. "His note said Moira went with them. Apparently she wanted to check in with her superiors from somewhere that wasn't here."

"Want to bet that either Erik or Moira doesn't make it back in one piece?" Sean asked.

Alex snorted. "I'd take that bet, except that neither of us has any money. Charles is with them, remember?"

"Oh. Yeah. Good point."

"We should get going if we want to make sure we get a few miles in," Hank said, before Alex could suggest a bet of his own. "Some of those clouds still look kind of ugly."

Alex bit back a comment about the absurdity of bigfoot being allergic to water—Hank might not have a spine worth mentioning, but Raven could get damn vicious in his defense—and shrugged. "So let's get going, then."

They took the same path that they had every morning since they'd arrived, up through the hills and around the grounds, and Alex was pleased to note that he was barely winded when they finally reached the front door again. The others might not think much of it, and he sure as hell wasn't going to be the one to point it out, but he'd been in prison. It wasn't really a place where you got to put in a lot of time running cross-country.

There was still no sign of Charles or the others as they munched their way through fire-toasted bread and peanut butter for breakfast, and when Hank retired to his lab with barely a mutter and Sean got permission to use Raven's weight set, Alex decided that he might as well do some more exploring.

There wasn't much to see, though…the sun might be up, but without electricity, the halls were still dark, and he'd already poked his nose into most of the open rooms. Old statues and art just didn't hold his attention very well.

He did have a moment of temporary insanity passing by Erik's room during which he thought that it might be interesting to poke around in the ridiculously few belongings the man seemed to possess just to see what was there, but self-preservation beat that ridiculous idea to death before he'd even lifted his hand from his side. He was pretty sure that Erik had been annoyed enough at him for his nosiness last night; no point in giving the guy an actual reason to murder him.

He was debating going outside and roaming the grounds for a while, mud or no mud, when he ran into Sean in search of lunch. Lunch turned out to be ice cream, on the grounds that the freezer was starting to warm and if they didn't eat it it would just melt anyway, and Alex kicked Hank's chair as he turned towards the window for about the tenth time in as many minutes. "Relax, mother, I'm sure they'll be back soon."

Hank ignored the jibe. "I was hoping to borrow the car and go into town to pick up some supplies today, but at this rate it'll be afternoon by the time I can go. I'll lose almost a day of work."

Heaven forbid. Alex shook his head. "Well, there _is_ more than one in the garage." At least two more, if the glimpse he'd gotten the other day was anything to go by. "Do you want me to hotwire one for you?"

"I don't—I mean, that's not—"

Alex snorted at the look of shock on Hank's face. If _he_ could hotwire, surely Hank was at least aware of the technique. Then again….

"It can wait," Hank said after a minute. "I don't really need to borrow a car that much."

"If you needed a car, why didn't you just say so?" Raven asked, joining them in the kitchen. "This is my home too, remember?"

"Oh. Yes, of course. But Charles doesn't have the keys?"

"Please, he'd be forever losing them. We keep them in a basket by the garage. Come on, I'll go with you. And we'll take the new one. Charles insists the clutch sticks, but he's just being ridiculous."

"Uh, would you mind if I borrow your weights while you're gone?" Alex asked as Hank hurried to stand and nearly knocked his chair over in the process. If she'd okayed Sean, he assumed she'd be okay with him using them too, but…

"That's fine; Sean can show you where they are," she said. "But you'd better put them back exactly how I set them up, and if there is one _drop_ of sweat left on my weight set after you finish I will hunt you down. Got it?"

"Got it," Alex agreed quickly.

Raven's weight room was actually set up next to her bedroom, fortunately for Alex since Sean's ability to give directions was almost as poor as his sense or them. He was surprised to find that the free weights weren't that much below his preferred setting. Either Sean had ignored Raven's order to put them back, which was unlikely—Sean might be a little scatterbrained sometimes, but he wasn't insane—or Raven was stronger than she looked. Something to keep in mind, he supposed. They might be training more-or-less individually now, but that was bound to change eventually.

Another five-pounder on each side brought it up to where he wanted it, and and then he put his towel down on the bench and lay back. Weights were something that he'd made use of frequently in prison, and the lack of a spotter didn't worry him.

He was halfway through his third rep when the weights slipped out of his hands—upwards, which, definitely better than the alternative—and he tilted his head back to see Erik leaning against the doorframe. "Hey," he greeted.

Erik nodded slightly.

"Did you guys get fuel for the generator?"

Another nod.

Not going to be a day for conversation on Erik's part, clearly. Not that it ever really was. "Were you looking for Raven?"

Headshake.

Alex glanced upwards, making sure that the weights were still hovering before pushing himself into a sitting position. "Uh, do you want to use the set when I'm done? I've only got one rep left." And he was running out of guesses for why Erik was here.

Erik seemed to consider for a moment and then shook his head again slightly. "Do you want to spar again today?"

Well, that explained why Erik was already in a sweat suit, anyway. Although Alex hadn't exactly expected the invitation, even if he hadn't thought that that one training session would be the last, either. "Sure." He couldn't read much of anything in Erik's expression, but at least there wasn't any obvious annoyance there. Of course, if he _was_ going to do something unpleasant in return for Alex's question last night, he might have decided to get him _out_ of the mansion first….

A flick of Erik's fingers drew his attention back to the present, and then Erik gestured to the weight hovering above him. Right. That. Alex lay back and reached for it as Erik lowered it into his hands again.

Erik remained in the doorway while he finished the rep and swapped the weights back to Raven's preferred setting, wiping the bench down last. He wasn't dumb enough not to take Raven's threat seriously. There was no point in changing into another sweat suit if he was just going to end up a muddy mess—and another sparring match with Erik all but guaranteed that he would—so they headed from Raven's room directly outside. Down yet another staircase that Alex would swear he'd never seen before. This place was still insane.

"You saw the numbers on my arm the other day?" Erik asked as they turned out onto the lawn.

Alex nearly gave himself whiplash as he jerked his head around. Given how little talking Erik had seemed in the mood to do, Alex had figured that he'd be lucky if Erik warned him before the sparring started. He sure as hell hadn't expected _that_.

Erik pulled his sleeve up and held out his arm, giving, Alex a clear view of the string of numbers, but he hadn't needed to. It wasn't something that Alex was likely to forget.

"I saw them," he admitted.

"Do you know what they mean?"

Alex nodded.

Erik tilted his head, and he shrugged awkwardly.

"It means that you were in one of the concentrations camps in Germany during the war." And probably that he was Jewish too, but Alex didn't think that that was really relevant to the conversation.

"I was in Poland, actually, but close enough. The first time that I used my powers was when I was separated from my parents."

"Oh." No wonder he'd walked out last night. "Sorry." Alex wasn't quite sure if he was apologizing for asking or for what had happened or what, but it felt like he had to say something.

Erik made a dismissive gesture. "What's done is done. But I have no interest in discussing it."

That was a pretty clear order not to ask any anything else, but Alex wouldn't have anyway, so he just nodded. Silence returned until they reached a relatively flat area, and Alex looked up when Erik stopped.

"Do you remember the last throw I showed you?" Erik asked.

"Yeah."

"Prove it."

Alex took a couple steps away. "Um…knife?"

Erik tilted his head, and then a flicker of amusement crossed his face and he used his mutation to pull his knife out of his leg sheath and into his hand. "You do know that it makes very little difference whether it's on me or not?"

He shrugged slightly. The fact that Erik wasn't wearing it would make _him_ feel a little better, anyway, total illusion or not.

After a moment, Erik mimicked his shrug and tossed the blade aside, embedding it neatly in the dirt ten feet away. "Turn."

Alex did as he ordered, reaching up to grip Erik's arm as it came across his chest.

"Ready?"


	6. He Fell

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed._

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><p>Alex shoved himself up from the ground and slammed a shoulder into Erik's chest. As far as showing any kind of finesse, it didn't, but then again, it wasn't that kind of fight. The hit didn't put Erik on the ground, but it did knock him backwards a couple steps, so Alex gave himself a point.<p>

When they'd switched from directed teaching to real sparring, he'd tried to return Erik's courtesy and avoid landing any hard punches anywhere really nasty, but all it had gotten him was a blunt order to fight properly. Well, that and an open-handed slap to the back of his head hard enough to make his ears ring. He was pretty sure that Erik could have hit quite a bit harder if he'd wanted, but he didn't really want to find out, and since it hadn't been like he a prayer _anyway_, he'd done as he was told. As expected, he was still losing miserably, but at least Erik was getting muddy now too.

Alex had never been one of the bigger guys on the playground—or in the yard—and he'd learned a long time ago that there were only a couple good options for a shorter, lighter fighter. Well, short of incinerating someone, anyway. He could either dart in and out of range and use speed to land blows that a larger, in-theory slower opponent couldn't return, or get in close where an opponent's longer limbs were more a hindrance than a help. Option A _really_ didn't work so great with Erik; taller and heavier he might be, but he moved like a damn snake on speed. And when it came to option B…well, as far as Alex could tell Erik had absolutely no compunction about taking a few punches, however nasty, if it meant the opportunity to drag his opponent to the ground. And once they were on the ground, it turned it into a grappling match where the weight difference alone pretty much guaranteed that Alex ended up eating mud. Alex had managed to turn the tables on him a few times, but a few times versus about a thousand times just didn't work out. Erik had promised to teach Alex some grappling tricks next time, but…well, this time was _this time_.

A weight he couldn't sustain came down across his left shoulder in his moment of distraction—Erik was also perfectly willing to fall on the ground if it meant taking Alex down with him—and Alex let himself go, scooping up a handful of mud to fling in Erik's face. A tried and true dirty-fighting trick, even if it was one that Erik had already proven that he knew as well as Alex did. Except that this time when he rolled around, he managed to land pretty much the whole mess in Erik's mouth.

Erik had him in a headlock before 'oh, shit' even made it fully through his consciousness, and he certainly didn't have time to do anything useful like run. And then no amount of scrabbling and squirming was enough to keep Erik from pinning him down in the worst of the muck and rubbing half the rest of the mud from the surrounding area into his hair. At least. In fact, Alex wasn't quite sure if it ended because he finally managed to get out an understandable, 'Sorry, sorry, I give!' or because the mud ran out.

He scrambled to his feet as soon as the grip on his neck released, trying to put some distance between he and Erik. Unfortunately, because the universe hated him, he lost his footing in the mud in his haste and ended up back on the ground with a 'splat.' With Erik looming over him. "Man, life sucks."

Rather than knocking him around any more, Erik actually chuckled—Alex hadn't even known that he could _make_ that sound; the non-shark smiles were still strange enough—and then he spit again and held out a hand. "Come. I think that is enough for today."

Alex was a little wary about accepting the hand up, although he definitely agreed with the sentiment. If Charles saw him looking like this, he probably wouldn't even let him back in the house. Hell, he wasn't even sure how he was going to get upstairs to get changed without leaving a giant trail of mud behind him that would get him _kicked_ out.

There was even mud down in his shoes, Alex realized as Erik tugged him into a standing position and they started the jog back to the house. Talk about gross.

Screams became audible as they approached the mansion, and Erik signaled for him to follow as they made their way around to the other side of the building rather going directly to the front door. When they came around the corner, they found Charles, Moira, and Sean, standing in front of the remains of some kind of wire window, most of the panes of which had already been blown out. No surprise there, given what they'd just heard. Charles and Moira were both wearing ear protection, but apparently, the sound waves hadn't caused any problems for Sean. It made sense, Alex figured. After all, his plasma blasts never hurt _him_.

Charles turned to them as they approached, his smile disappeared almost instantly when he caught sight of them. "My word! What happened to you? Was there an accident?"

"His fault," Alex declared.

Charles frowned and then pulled off the ear protection. "I beg your pardon?"

"He fell," Erik said, before Alex could repeat himself.

"Yes, well, you don't look a great deal better." Charles shook his head. "Whatever happened, you should both go inside and get changed before you fall ill. You're simply _soaked_ in mud." He paused. "But perhaps…hose off…first. There should be a spigot just around the side of the house. You must have run right past it."

Twenty minutes later, and Alex thought that he'd done a pretty good job of washing up. Or at least the mud had stopped running off him in rivers when he'd ducked under the spigot Charles had directed them to, which had been a definite improvement. More like he'd been dropped in a pond than a pigpen. The double take that Hank gave him when they passed each other in the hall made him wonder, though, even as he settled for a scowl and hurrying past.

"You know, I'm sure that Charles would talk to Erik for you if you asked," Hank said.

Alex turned back towards him. "What?"

Hank shifted awkwardly. "I just mean…well, you've ended up looking a little…rough…after Erik's training sessions. I know there have only been two, but…." He waved a hand vaguely in Alex's direction. "I'm sure that Charles could convince him to back off. Just a little. I mean, if you wanted him to."

"He's not that bad," Alex found himself defending. "I can handle it." Hank didn't look convinced, but then again, he didn't even have a spine to speak of, so Alex decided that it wasn't worth arguing about. "Forget about it, okay? I'm fine. Just…wet."

"Your hair is brown. And you aren't wearing any shoes or socks."

"Wet and muddy." Despite best efforts. "And I left my shoes by the side door." Even fast-running water hadn't been quite enough to rinse all the mud off them, and he really hadn't wanted to mess up Charles' fancy rugs. But considering that muddying him up was about as minor as anything Erik could have inflicted short of ignoring what Alex had done, he still didn't see why Hank was worrying. "Excuse me."

His hair was blond again by dinner—he made sure of that when he got out of the shower—and Sean apparently had cooking duty tonight because when Alex wandered down to the kitchen there were two skillets on the stove with something bubbling inside them and Sean was standing over the kitchen sink gargling something. Another of Hank's potions, if the half-full glass of cloudy something in his hand was anything to go by.

"Are you all right?" Alex asked.

Sean spit a mouthful of liquid into the sink. "Overstressed my vocal cords," he croaked. "Again. But it's not as bad this time, and hey, I was hitting the right panel by the end. Of course, I was still hitting most of the others too, but…." He shrugged, setting the glass down and turning to mix up whatever was in the two skillets. "What happened to you? I figured Erik must have dragged you off to train again, but you came back looking like you'd been dropped in a swamp or something. I didn't even know there were any swamps around here."

Alex shrugged, moving up to look past Sean's shoulder at whatever was cooking. Ground beef and…beans? Whatever; his cooking abilities didn't extend much past scrambled eggs so he wasn't going to comment. "Yeah, we were training, and it was actually going pretty well at first. I think I remembered more of the throws than he expected, and then he showed me a couple more, plus counters for some of the others. But then I sort of made him eat mud—literally, even if it was an accident—and..." He shrugged.

"And you're not in the hospital?" Sean put the spatula down and turned back towards him. "Are you sure that you shouldn't be? I mean, you don't have any busted ribs or anything?"

"What? No. I'm fine. I just got muddy." Seriously, between Sean and Hank…it wasn't like Erik was _that_ bad. Not someone that you messed with, obviously, but he had yet to beat anyone here bloody. Not even him, with whom Erik could legitimately call it training.

"Better you than me, I guess," Sean said after a minute, shaking his head. "Anyway, it's tacos tonight if you haven't guessed, so do you mind shredding some lettuce for me? You can just put it in that bowl over there. I'll get the tomatoes chopped, and I think Raven said there was still some shredded cheese left in one of the bins."


	7. Out the Window

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed._

_Some parts of this chapter were taken from the film (as best I could manage, anyway). If you recognize it, it's probably not mine._

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><p>"Alex, come on, Charles and Hank are about to push Sean out the window."<p>

"I—what?" Alex paused, arms outstretched over his chest, as he turned his head to look at Raven. There was no way that he'd just heard what he thought that he'd heard.

"Come _on_," she repeated from the doorway, all but stamping her foot. "I do not want to miss this."

"What?" Alex repeated, racking the weights automatically and sitting up.

"Sean, Charles, window, _move_."

That made even less sense than her first statement had, but she looked like she was getting ready to grab him and haul him bodily out of the room so he pushed himself up off the weight bench. "Okay, okay, I'm coming." And if she yelled at him for not having cleaned up the weight bench, he would just blame her for hustling him out of there so quickly. Not that it would do any good, knowing Raven, but…. "Can I at least ask _why_ Charles and Hank are going to push Sean out a window?" he tried as he hurried through the halls after her.

"To help him work on his mutation."

"Since when does he need to be pushed out a window to make him scream?" Sean was probably the most cooperative of all of them. Besides...a window?

She didn't answer as she led him down a flight of stairs and into yet another unused bedroom, once again raising the question of just how many rooms this place had, but now obviously wasn't the time to ask. Erik was already in the room, leaning out the window on the far wall, and Raven climbed up onto the arm of a chair behind him so she could see over his shoulder. Which didn't leave a lot of room for Alex, but Erik signaled him over before he could ask, shifting sideways slightly to let Alex slip in between him and the window frame.

"They're seriously throwing him out a window?" Alex checked as he leaned out.

"I believe the plan is for him to jump."

Sean was sitting in the window of the next room over, his feet on the edge of the brickwork that ran the length of the building. And he did not look happy. Something was fastened across his chest and his arms, but Alex couldn't see what it was from the angle he had.

"Why?" Be it jumping or being thrown, he still hadn't gotten a good answer to that one yet.

"If I understood correctly, between Sean's scream and the…wings…that Hank created, he should be able to fly."

"Seriously?" Alex looked back at Erik, trying to figure out if the man had taken up joking along with chuckling, but Erik's only response was a slight nod. "Since when do sonic screams make somebody fly?"

"Hank's idea," Raven cut in. "Charles thinks it's a good theory, though."

"Did anyone ask what Sean thought?" Alex didn't bother waiting for an answer, twisting around to look back out the window. Where Charles and Hank had stuck their heads out on either side of Sean, and Sean was actually looking even more unhappy than he had been a few minutes ago. Being able to shoot plasma blasts out of his chest suddenly seemed like a way better power to have than Alex had ever thought before. At least it didn't have much in the way of applications beyond the obvious. He frowned. That he knew about. Who knew what those measurements that Hank had taken had really been for?

Sean crossed himself, and Alex glanced back at Erik quickly as Sean held his arms out. Erik's expression was half amusement and half what-the-hell-are-they-thinking, which didn't exactly help the situation feel any less bizarre, and Alex turned back as Sean began to lean forward. And then plummeted to the ground below with a scream that most definitely wasn't sonic.

"Oh, _ouch_," Alex muttered as he hit the ground, hearing a similar mutter of sympathy from Raven. For a moment afterwards, there was silence, but then Sean shoved himself back to his feet and made a decidedly rude gesture at the other window, and Alex couldn't help joining in with Erik and Raven's laughter.

A moment later, Sean dusted himself off and stalked towards the door, ending the morning's entertainment, and Alex pushed himself away from the window with Raven and Erik. Personally, Alex didn't want to be in the area the next time Sean saw Hank. Or even Charles. In fact, he wasn't sure that he wanted to be in the _building._

"You, find me after lunch," Erik ordered as Alex reached the door, and Alex wasn't surprised to turn back and find the order directed at him.

"As long as you swear you won't push me out any windows," he agreed. And then wished that he hadn't as Erik just stared. Giving Erik ideas was probably not a good thing.

* * *

><p>Three dummies in front of him, and a dinner plate strapped to his chest that was supposed to help him hit only one of them. Plus some sensors that did God only knew what. Alex could already see how well this was going to end.<p>

If he was lucky, he'd be like Sean and able to walk away when it was over—if he was very lucky both Charles and Hank would be able to too, although the metal walls of the tunnel should help out there—but given that his luck had never been described as 'good'...

He scowled at the door. Why in the hell couldn't Hank stick to tormenting himself with his own mutation? Alex was fine getting beat up by Erik on a mostly-daily basis; he didn't see why his stupid plasma blasts had to be dragged into things as well. Unfortunately, Hank had spent most of the morning fitting and calibrating and whatevering this stupid plate, and it was pretty obvious that Charles wasn't going to let Alex get away with _not_ trying to use it.

He clenched his fists and concentrated, but rather than that wild, spiraling power that he was accustomed to, there was a surge inside his chest and the energy blasted forward, directly out of the plate. And then veered sideways and smashed the left dummy to smithereens. Well, so much for only hitting the one in front of him. But when he looked down the plate was still attached and intact so all things considered, it could have been a lot worse.

Alex took a deep breath and focused again, doing his best to shove more power through the plate, trying to get enough force in it to keep the beam focused straight ahead this time, but it spun out of control anyway, and for a second he felt himself go airborne. And then he was lying on the metal floor of the tunnel, staring upwards as bright lights flashed in front of his eyes.

"Ow." He sat up slowly, one hand going to the back of his head where he could already feel a lump rising.

The door opened a moment later, and Hank and the Professor re-entered just as he was getting to his feet. "Are you all right?" Charles asked.

"Yeah, I'm just great. I think your plate has some glitches, Bozo." The middle mannequin was still standing, practically taunting him, while the one on the right had apparently met the same fate as the one on the left at some point during his flight.

Charles gave him a disapproving look, but Hank didn't even seem to notice as he leaned over. "Was there any damage?"

"To me or to the plate?"

Hank didn't answer—not that Alex had really needed one—as he began to unstrap the plate from Alex's chest. "If the sensors were able to get clear readings, I should be able to recalibrate it based on strength of the plasma blasts. It might be that the heat interfered with the feedback circuits, which would have made it difficult to…."

He continued mumbling to himself as he wandered off with the plate in his hands, but Alex didn't understand any of the words coming out of his mouth so he stopped paying attention pretty much immediately.

"Well we'll have to try again after Hank's had a chance to check the readings and do some fine-tuning," Charles said after a moment, patting his shoulder. "Are you sure that you're all right?"

Alex waved him off, reaching up to rub the back of his head again. "I'll be fine." He could use some ice, but he was perfectly capable of getting that for himself. It was a good thing that they had real power back and weren't just running off the generator anymore, though.

Charles nodded. "You should be proud, you know. All things considered, that was an excellent first try."

"Right." This was one of those times that Alex really wanted to know what bizarrely cheery world Charles was living in.

"No, no, I'm quite serious."

He patted Alex's shoulder again as Alex wondered whether Charles had read his mind or if his opinion was just obvious from his expression.

"But it's about time for lunch," Charles continued, and if he had read Alex's mind, no hint of it showed on his face. "Why don't you go on upstairs, and I'll clean up in here?"

There were fewer fires to put out this time than there had been before, at least, and after a moment, Alex nodded. "Yeah. Sure."

Sean, Raven, and Moira were already at the table when Alex got to the kitchen, apparently plotting some kind of escape for Sean, and he dropped into an unoccupied chair with a sigh. "Where are you going?"

"Dude, I don't _care_. Didn't you hear Charles talking to me after breakfast?"

"No, Hank hauled me off to model mutilated dinnerware. For all the good it did."

Raven gave him an odd look, but Sean was so deep in his own misery that he didn't even seem to hear Alex's words. "He has another idea to help me—he and Hank—and if the weather is good we'll try it this afternoon." He buried his face in his hands. "Have you looked outside? It's gorgeous! Like sixty-five degrees and not a cloud in the sky!"

"Did he say what the idea is?" Alex asked after a minute.

"No, but Erik said that he wanted to be there." He raised his head again. "I'm going to _die_!"

Alex considered pointing out—again—that Erik wasn't really that bad, but considering that Moira was sitting at the table as well... He settled for a sympathetic pat of Sean's shoulder as he stood to get some ice. "I'm sure you'll be fine. Really."


	8. Worst Case Scenarios

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed._

_I got one question about whether there will be any romance in this fic. There won't be. I don't normally write any kind of romance fics; this is strictly a mentor fic. _

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><p>"It was like a billion feet high!" Sean declared yet again, and Alex once again nodded sympathetically. There wasn't much else that he could do given that Erik really had shoved Sean off a satellite yesterday. Of course, Sean had ended the day knowing how to fly, which from Alex's perspective seemed pretty worth it, but then again, he wasn't the one who'd been shoved. And he didn't see anything that he said calming Sean down anyway—sleep obviously hadn't—so he kept his mouth shut and stuck to nodding at what seemed like the appropriate times.<p>

"Plus, do you know what's even worse?" Sean barely paused to take a breath, never mind long enough to let Alex hazard a guess. "Did you see the way that Hank was eyeing me while we were running earlier? Who _knows_ what they have planned for me next? I bet th—"

"Sean, Alex, breakfast is on that table," Raven called from the landing below them, neatly interrupting Sean's tirade. "Hurry or Erik and Hank will eat everything."

'Everything' was an exaggeration, but it wasn't as much of one as it should have been given the amount of food that Hank could put away and the fact that Erik would simply eat whatever was put in front of him. Alex turned towards the stairs.

"Bet they throw me off the table before we get to eat anything," Sean muttered, following behind.

They didn't of course, in fact the conversation revolved mostly around political stuff that Alex didn't really care much about. Well, okay, Erik threw out a couple of dire scenarios in response to what Alex had thought were pretty non-threatening comments from Moira that drew even his attention, ideas that sounded more like they belonged in horror flicks than real life, but he was pretty sure that that was just Erik being Erik.

Erik and Moira were still sniping at each other when the meal ended, and Alex escaped for Raven's weight set as soon as he finished rinsing his dishes. He felt a little disloyal doing it, debating for a moment sticking around and trying and distract Hank from whatever else he might be planning for Sean, but realistically, Alex's odds of distracting the geek from whatever his new idea was were pretty much nil. He could _irritate_ Hank, sure, but it wasn't like he had any kind of scientific know-how to propose an alternate theory or plan or whatever. Especially not when the professor was involved as well. Besides, he had an unhappy suspicion that he was still on their radar too, and as he'd discovered when he'd gone to bed last night, the bump on his head was still pretty sore and the last thing he wanted was it impacting any more floors. Or walls. Or anything else, for that matter.

His sore head prompted him to grab an extra towel to put it down on the end of weight bench before he lay down, but after he found a comfortable position, it was easy to lose himself in the rhythm of the lifts. Until the weights were pulled up out of his hands, anyway.

"Hey," he greeted as he turned to the side. At least this time it wasn't a surprise to see Erik in the doorway, although why the man couldn't just say 'hello' or make some noise he had no idea. "Sparring?" he asked when Erik didn't immediately say anything.

Erik dipped his head slightly in agreement. "After you and I have both finished here."

"You want to use the weights?"

Another marginal nod.

"Just give me a second and I'll be done, then."

"Finish what you had planned."

Alex nodded in agreement—it wasn't like he had much left anyway—and when Erik gestured at the weights floating above his head, Alex shifted back onto his back and reached for the bar.

When he finished, he helped Erik swap out the weights for the higher setting that he preferred and debated going back up to his room. It wasn't like he had anything to do there but wait for Erik to come hunting him again, though, and since Erik didn't seem to object to his presence, Alex took a seat against the wall beside the door, resting his forearms on his knees.

"Did you really mean it, earlier?" he asked as Erik finished his first set and rested the weights for a moment, taking several deep breaths. "All that stuff that you were saying about what could happen to mutants?" He wasn't going to add the 'Or were you just trying to annoy Moira?' part of the question, even if he was pretty sure that it was a valid possibility.

Erik's expression didn't change as he reached for the bar again, lowering the weights to his chest and then straightening his arms. "I meant it. And it isn't what could happen. It's what _will_ happen."

Alex opened his mouth and then shut it again. Granted that from what little he knew of Erik's history, it was pretty understandable that Erik would think of worst-case scenarios first, but…. "The professor didn't seem very worried," he pointed out.

That got a snort. "Charles lives in a bubble." Silence fell for several minutes, and then, "It won't look like anything at the start. Just a bunch of paperwork, probably, like those files Charles generated using that machine. A list of names, nothing so terribly awful."

"How many other mutants did you find?" Alex asked. It didn't directly relate to their current topic of conversation, maybe, but he'd never actually seen Cerebro in action, and he was curious. "I mean, there's just a few of us here now."

"There were coordinates for a great deal many more mutants than Charles and I would ever have been able to speak to…hundreds, I would say. At least. Some were in locations that we couldn't easily reach in the time we had, some he was able to determine just through the use of the machine were too old or too young for our purposes, and some have abilities that don't lend themselves to our specific needs. For example, the ability to grow fingernails quickly has relatively few applications in battle. And many of the ones we did talk to simply refused outright."

"Why?" Okay, granted, he'd been sitting in a jail cell without much in the way of other options when Charles and Erik had showed up, but even if he'd still be on the outside, he couldn't imagine not being at least _curious_ about other people like him.

"Because they had their own lives. Because they wanted to be _human_."

Apparently his 'why' had dropped them right back into their previous topic of conversation—or at least one that ran along similar lines—because Erik had practically spit the word 'human,' and even in profile Alex could see the disgust on his face as he continued.

"Mark my words, they're just as blind to the situation as Charles is. All of them. They can claim that all they want is peace, that they just want to be allowed to live 'normal' lives, as much as they want. Now that the government knows that they exist, they aren't going to be left alone. Not for very long, anyway. Pretty soon someone will want more than names. They'll want tests and labels and identification. 'For the good of the nation' they'll call it. But it won't be for anyone's good, it will be because they're afraid of us. And then they'll hate us. And someday it will come down to a fight between mutants and humans where the prize will be survival."

That was totally a setup for a horror film, not to mention more words than Alex thought he'd ever heard out of Erik's mouth at once, and Alex was once again at a loss for what to say in return for a several minutes. "We're trying to help, though," he finally offered. "We're trying to stop Shaw. Doesn't that…matter?"

"It won't." The weight spun upwards, out of Erik's hands, and he pushed himself into a sitting position to look at Alex. "So naïve. All of you."

Alex felt himself flush.

Erik's expression didn't waver. "I've been listed before. Marked. _Jüdisch_ and numbered. I won't let it happen again." He shook his head, flicking his fingers to lower the bar back to the stand and sitting up. "I'm finished here. Let's go."

Oh, great, the guy was now more than a little worked up, and his plan to relax was to go outside and beat on Alex. Because he couldn't do that well enough when he was calm. Why had Alex thought talking would be a good idea again?

Erik frowned, making an impatient gesture, and Alex stood as well. "We have to put it back the weights back how they were, or Raven will have a fit," he said before Erik could step past him out the door. Having Erik beating him up was bad enough, he didn't really want to go a second round with Raven when they got back afterwards.

Erik's fingers twitched, but he didn't actually object to Alex's words, and the two of them wiped down the bench and returned the weights to their initial setting in silence before leaving the mansion out one of the multitude of side doors. Alex didn't recognize the path that Erik followed, but it wasn't like that was unusual, and most of his mind was concentrated on a plan to survive anyway. If he were lucky, maybe irritation would make Erik's sparring turn clumsy or something. Yeah. Right. Right after a flock of pigs passed overhead, wings outstretched.

Erik finally brought them to a halt in a greenbelt running between two of the wooded areas, and whether he was still thinking about their conversation earlier or not, he did toss his knife aside without requiring a request from Alex. That had to be a good thing, Or at least Alex hoped so, anyway. Since it seemed that they were going to start with sparring rather than directed teaching today, Alex checked his footing, brought his fists up, and didn't wait for the question. "Ready."

And then they were circling. Alex knew that Erik's misstep two minutes in had to be a feint—Erik had shown him a trick the other day that started with a similar setup—but there was no way that he could let it pass without at least _trying_ to get inside. If he could just set Erik off balance a little—

"Oomph." And he was on his stomach on the ground. Well, no surprise there. Alex sighed and rolled onto his back, accepting the hand Erik offered to pull him to his feet. And then sucked in his breath when Erik slapped him lightly on the back of the head. It hadn't actually been a very hard hit, certainly not as hard as the one Erik had given him when he'd been trying not to land blows, and any other day he'd have taken it for the warning that it was and not given it a second thought. Unfortunately, after the disaster with Hank's dinnerware yesterday….

"Alex?" Erik asked with a frown.

"I'm fine."

Erik shook his head and reached out again. "Be still."

Alex winced as Erik's fingers found the lump on the back of his skull quickly, and without thinking, he pushed Erik's arm away. Which didn't do much for Erik's frown.

"Where did that come from?" Erik demanded. "Did that happen when we were doing throws the other day?"

"What? No." As he'd noticed the first time that they'd sparred, Erik was actually very good about not leaving more than minor bruises. "I tried out the harness that Hank built for me yesterday morning, and his calculations were a little off. Blast went that way," he gestured forward, "I went that way," he jerked his thumb back over his shoulder, "and my head sort of landed first."

"Look at me." Erik held up a hand in front of Alex's face. "Follow my finger."

"What? I don't have a concussion," Alex said. "I've had them before. I'd know." Especially after a day. Erik's response to that was a disbelieving look—which, considering how naïve he'd already stated that he found the rest of them probably shouldn't have come as a surprise—and with scowl, Alex gave in and traced the path of Erik's finger with his eyes.

"All right," Erik finally acknowledged. "You probably don't have a concussion. But I'm not going to toss you around until that's further healed, either."

"So weights again?" He didn't usually do double sets, but….

"Running, I think. You should be doing another three or four miles every day anyway."

"Ah, man, now you're just _looking_ for an excuse to kill me off." Erik, Charles, and to a lesser extent Hank—when he wasn't being stupid about his feet, anyway—all seemed to enjoy running, but Alex had agreed with Sean's assessment since the beginning. If no one was chasing him, he didn't see the point. A couple miles every morning was one thing, as long as he was already awake it was an easy way to loosen up before breakfast, but more than that? No thanks.

Erik smirked and then turned and took off across the field at a lope, and Alex glared at his back for a few moments before hurrying to catch up. Life was just not fair sometimes.

They'd just topped the ridge and were headed down into another wooded area when a bark caught Alex's attention, and he grinned and clapped his hands.

The collie veered abruptly towards them, tail flying high, and Alex was slowing down to greet it when a hand caught him by the collar and yanked him abruptly backwards.

"Wh—"

Erik snapped something at him—clearly an order, but it wasn't in English so Alex had no idea what the order was—even as he grabbed for the knife in his leg sheath.

Except that it wasn't there because he always put it aside when they sparred, and he hadn't picked it back up when today's sparring match had turned into a run. Erik seemed to realize that in the same instant that Alex did, and Alex checked himself for metal quickly. Unfortunately, he was wearing a sweat suit and tennis shoes that didn't even have metal eyes; there was nothing there that Erik could use.

Erik swore, or at least Alex assumed that that was what the string of vicious syllables was, and Alex's head snapped back up as he tried to figure out where the threat was coming from. He didn't see anything, but he trusted Erik's instincts. Whatever it was, if it came close enough and Erik got out of the way, he could _probably_ handle it, but not if he couldn't find it.


	9. At a Loss

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed. I know it's been awhile since I've updated this, but it hasn't been abandoned._

_Warning, some cruelty to an animal (and to Alex) at the beginning of this chapter._

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><p>"Where is it?" Alex hissed at Erik, planting his feet in preparation for summoning a plasma burst. He'd really rather another option given his track record when it came to that little thing called aim, but at this point he didn't see that he had a choice. And he was reasonably sure that Erik would have the sense to get back before he had to release the blast. Unfortunately, he needed to know what to release it <em>at<em>, and he still couldn't make out anything in the direction that Erik was staring except trees and brush. Well, trees and brush and a tail-wagging collie, but…. "I don't see anyth—"

The collie bounded the last few feet, obviously as blind as Alex to whatever danger Erik seemed to sense, but as it rose up on its hind legs to greet them, Erik kicked it viciously, pulling Alex behind him again in the same instant.

For a second after the dog landed in the dirt with a yelp, Alex was frozen, but then the collie was back on its feet whining, and Alex grabbed Erik's arm before he could do anything more drastic. "Erik, no! It's just a dog!"

Erik shook him off easily and Alex caught a flicker of fury and something else in Erik's expression before he landed on the ground a few feet away with an aching jaw. And Alex was suddenly glad that the few teachers at the juvie high school had spent their time working with the kids who couldn't even read in English rather than teaching, say, German because he didn't even want to know what it was that Erik was saying to him.

"It's just a _dog_," he repeated, pushing himself into a sitting position but not making an attempt to get to his feet. "Look." He turned his attention to the dog and whistled quietly. "Buddy. Hey, buddy." He clapped his hands. Under almost any other circumstances, he'd have gone over and petted the dog, maybe tried to read its name off the collar it wore, but given what Erik had just done…well, even if the dog let him get close, that kick had to have bruised if not broken ribs. Alex had better sense than to touch an injured animal that didn't already know him. "Time to go home, buddy. Go home, now." He pointed off into the distance in the direction that the dog had come from, and whether the collie actually knew the word 'home' or just wanted to get away from Erik, it turned in a circle and then trotted off. "See?"

Erik stepped over, grabbing his arm and yanking him back to his feet, and Alex fought down the urge to pull away as Erik lapsed back into snarling German. There was no way that he was breaking Erik's grip, and fighting would just make the bruise that he could already feel forming even worse. Or goad Erik into hauling off and hitting him again, which— Alex actually heard his teeth clack together as Erik shook him and spit something that sounded vaguely question-like, and he shook his head.

"Erik, I can't understand you!"

That finally seemed to bring Erik up short and he released Alex with an abruptness that made him stumble. "Go back to the house. Now."

It was English, at least, although far more heavily accented than Alex was used to hearing from Erik, and his first instinct was to obey. Unfortunately, given that Erik hadn't taken them on a very direct route out here, he wasn't sure which way it was. "I can't…I mean, I don't…."

Erik gave him a more than slightly disgusted look. "Of course not." He turned abruptly. "Follow."

Alex didn't argue although he could feel his face flaming at the derision in Erik's voice, and he stayed several yards behind Erik as they jogged back to the mansion. Or jogged back until the mansion was in sight, anyway; as soon as it was visible over the ridge, Erik turned off, and when Alex started to follow thinking it was some roundabout trail back, he got a vicious repeat of the order to go back. He wasn't about to make Erik repeat himself a third time, so he took off towards it and tried to keep himself on as straight a path as possible when he dipped down into valleys and it disappeared from sight again. He still ended up on the west end of the lawn somehow—and it wasn't a small lawn—but at least it was familiar territory, and when he finally reached the actual building, he made his way upstairs automatically.

"Alex?" Hank asked as he passed, looking up from the notebook he'd been staring down into and frowning. "Are you okay?"

"What? Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well, you're back early, and you're…a lot less of a mess than usual." His eyes narrowed. "And what happened to your jaw?"

Alex snorted. "My being _less_ messy than normal is a reason to be worried? Weren't you just saying the other day that I should talk to the professor and get Erik to lighten up? Make up your mind already." He didn't really want to get into the bruise on his jaw, and getting aggressive with the geek was the fastest way to throw him off.

Hank shrugged awkwardly. "Well, that bruise on your arm doesn't look very good, either."

It was starting to come in a pretty spectacular blue, Alex noticed when he glanced down at his upper arm, but there wasn't much that he could do besides shrug again. "I'm fine. Just took a fall." What else could he say? 'Erik doesn't like dogs'? Right, and in other news, Sean wouldn't touch oatmeal unless there was at least as much sugar as oats in it, and Raven thought that the only point of classical music was to put a person to sleep. "Excuse me, I need a shower."

* * *

><p>"And one, two, <em>three<em>."

Alex lifted—carefully, because he was helping move new glass panes for Sean to use as target practice and he'd already nicked a finger on another pane that he hadn't noticed was cracked—at the same time that Moira did, and the two of them began to make their way up out of the basement slowly. He still didn't know why the professor had so many glass panes in the basement but then again, there was also a metal bunker under the mansion. Some questions just shouldn't be asked.

Things had been weird since the whole mess with the dog, to the point where Alex couldn't figure out how the others hadn't noticed it. Well, okay, Charles had, or at least he'd asked Alex a few times if everything was all right, and Alex couldn't come up with another reason why he'd suddenly start asking questions like that, but he was a telepath so he probably would have had trouble _not_ noticing. Raven was more interested in getting his help rearranging things around the mansion than wondering why he had free time to help, though, and while Sean enjoyed showing off the results of his training, he didn't seem to think much about Alex not training with Erik any more. Hank did seem a little surprised about Alex spending extra time in his lab letting him tweak the targeting systems on the chest plate, but neither of them was inclined to heart-to-heart discussions and short of the most basic inquiries, he kept his questions to himself.

It wasn't that Erik wasn't around, he was, but Alex hadn't seen him much at all outside of meals for the past week. It was pretty much like it had been in the beginning. Erik talked to Charles frequently, Raven occasionally, Moira when he had something rude to say, and acted for the most part as if the rest of them were mobile furniture. It was…Alex didn't really know what it was. But he didn't like it. He'd gotten kind of used to Erik.

He snorted quietly and then shook his head when Moira raised her eyebrows in question. Maybe that was why the others hadn't noticed that anything was up. Erik had never gotten past the moving furniture stage with them. It was only Alex that he'd started treating differently and now wasn't.

As far as small favors went, the bruise on Alex's jaw had faded to nothing a couple days ago putting an end to the occasional questioning looks, and Alex figured that it must have been more of a glancing blow than he'd realized. Which, considering that he'd ended up on the ground, didn't make him feel better about how hard Erik would be able to hit if he got a straight punch in, but it did explain why he'd stayed conscious. The one on his bicep on the other hand was still an ugly greenish color and he was starting to think that it would be around for the rest of the month. He was trying to keep it covered—as tricky as that was given that he'd already ripped the arms off most of his shirts—mostly because if any of the others decided to use their brains they'd figure out pretty quickly that a bruise that wrapped _around_ his arm hadn't come from any fall..

He and Moira finally got the pane to the top of the stairs and were making their way around the corner carefully when there was a sudden ringing and both of them glanced up in surprise.

"Was that the doorbell?" Moira asked.

Alex shrugged. "Maybe." He'd never heard it before, but then, as far as he knew, no one had ever come to the front door in the time that they'd been here.

She frowned and nodded at the wall. "Let's check it out."

They set the pane down where she'd indicated and headed down the hallway quickly, but Charles had beaten them there and was smiling at an older woman in the doorway as they turned into the foyer. "—so good to see you again, Mrs. Little. I thought that you and Mr. Little had moved down to the Carolinas."

"Oh, we did, four years ago now, but we come up every now and again to see the children. And three grandchildren as of last month, did you know?"

"I didn't, actually. Congratulations."

Her smile widened. "Anyway, when I saw your car while I was out walking Henry, I thought that I'd stop in and say hello. Is your sister here as well?"

"Unfortunately she went into town today with a friend," Charles said. "But she'll be so sorry that she missed you. I'll try and remember to send her by to say hello." He smiled at what looked like some kind of sheepdog mix, muzzle almost white with age, that was sitting beside Mrs. Little. "And how are you, Henry?"

Henry looked as though he was about ready for a nap, but he took Charles' attention as an excuse to step up and bump his head against Charles' extended hand for a scratch, and Alex jerked in surprise as the metal vase beside him warped viciously. Erik was here too, he realized, and it only took him a moment to locate the man standing motionless in the opposite doorway leading to the far hall. But the look on Erik's face….

It wasn't just that Erik didn't like dogs, Alex realized abruptly. Erik was _afraid_ of them. He wouldn't have believed it if he wasn't seeing it—hell, he still wasn't sure that he believed it—but the look Erik was giving the old mutt was the same one that had Alex had seen flash across his face when the collie had first bounded up to greet them, and it definitely wasn't just dislike.

Moira's less than complimentary mutter as she scowled at the vase and then turned to head back in the direction they'd come from drew Alex back to reality, and he realized abruptly that at some point during his little revelation, Erik had caught him staring and was now staring right back. And some of what he'd figured out, or at least his shock at figuring it out, must have shown on his face because Erik's jaw clenched suddenly and he turned and stalked back down the hall.

Alex stared after him as Charles continued to make small talk, until Moira called for him to come help her again, but as he made his way back to where they'd left the pane of glass, his mind was still turning furiously. He'd been confused about the whole situation with Erik before, but now...well, now he was totally at a loss._  
><em>


	10. Distraction

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed._

* * *

><p>Alex went back to helping Moira move glass panels up to the lawn, the physical activity—and the fact that the glass panels tended to bite painfully into unprotected skin every time he lost focus—distracting him from what he'd seen, but the look on Erik's face remained firmly imprinted in his mind. When Charles and Moira finally declared that they'd brought up enough glass panels to give Sean another few days' worth of targets, he took the opportunity to escape up to his room. His excuse was that he needed to clean up before dinner, which wasn't <em>entirely<em> untrue given the grime from the panels that had rubbed off on his hands and clothes, but it wasn't something that he'd have thought twice about beyond sticking his hands under the faucet for a few seconds on a normal day either, and he had a feeling that Charles knew that. Then again, Charles had been looking at him strangely for the past few days anyway, asking how he was and all that. Hopefully he'd just assume that this was more of the same.

Alex scrubbed off his hands, brushed at the dirt on his shirt and jeans a few times before deciding that he'd done enough, and then rinsed his hands once more and headed for his room, flinging himself down on his bed. Erik. Afraid. Of dogs.

The last was almost an afterthought, putting 'afraid' and 'Erik' in the same sentence relation to _anything_ was the hard part for him to reconcile. Well, okay, putting 'afraid' and 'Erik' in a sentence in the context of someone being afraid of Erik he could see no problem, hell, Erik seemed to enjoy intimidating people. But Erik himself being afraid just didn't seem possible.

He had some time before dinner, and after a few minutes of staring at the ceiling, Alex rolled back to his feet and wandered down to the library. It was deserted, which wasn't really a surprise given the time of day. After dinner was a different story since that's when Erik and Charles took themselves off to play chess or discuss world events or whatever it was that they did, but right now it was safe enough. Sean had already informed him that Charles didn't have any comics, which hadn't come as a great surprise, and he wasn't about to touch anything bound in leather and what probably wasn't real gold lettering but that he was a little afraid to look too closely at, but he had seen a couple shelves of paperbacks tucked off to one side. Something there was bound to be a decent distraction.

By the time the intercom crackled to life an hour or two later, Raven's voice summoning him and the others to the kitchen, he'd more than half convinced himself that he'd imagined everything. It just…it didn't make sense. This was Erik he was talking about. Except then, a few minutes after he'd taken a seat at the table, Erik walked—well, stalked—past him to take a seat at the other end without even a glance in his direction, and the certainty that he hadn't returned.

"_Alex_."

Alex swiveled as his name registered, and Sean frowned at him. "Could I have the potatoes, please?"

"Oh. Yeah, sure. " Alex picked up the bowl of potatoes that had somehow appeared at his elbow and passed it over to him.

"Man, that was like the third time that I asked you. What planet are you on?"

"Sorry, I was just…thinking." He shrugged and then realized belatedly as the potatoes moved on to Moira on Sean's other side that he hadn't taken any for himself. Too late now, though. If he asked for them back, it would only draw more attention to his distraction. Besides, they were bound to come back around eventually. If Hank didn't clean the bowl, first, anyway; on the days that Raven cooked, he always asked for second helpings of everything and complimented everything even if there was no reason to. It wasn't that she was a bad cook or anything—she was certainly better than Alex was—it was just that Hank was kind of hopeless when it came to flirting, and on a normal day Alex would have been holding back snickers and matching eye-rolls with Sean.

Today, though, Alex was just grateful that Hank and Charles monopolized most of the meal with talk about some new brilliant idea for an invention because he wasn't up to holding much of a conversation, and afterwards, he escaped up to his room before anyone could grab him. Normally he would have been happy enough to join Sean and Raven and whoever else in front of the television set, but the odds of any news show holding his attention were pretty nonexistent, and they were bound to notice.

He stretched out on his bed again with a sigh, staring up at the ceiling for a few minutes, and then frowned. He should have grabbed at least one of the books from the library. Charles wouldn't mind, especially since Alex still wasn't about to touch the expensive-looking ones, and not that he was a geek or anything, but despite the crappiness of both the juvie and prison libraries, reading had been one of the few things that he'd been able to do in solitary to keep himself from going crazy. Flipping through the ones here had worked okay to take his mind off things earlier, too.

He pushed himself upright again. Raven had cooked, which from their rough schedule meant that it was Charles' turn to clean so he should be able to get the books he wanted before Charles and Erik took over the library for the night.

At least he could find the library now without help, and when he opened the door and glanced around quickly, he saw neither Erik nor Charles, so he went in and let the door shut behind him. There had been a couple on the shelf under the window that had looked interesting…. He found two of the travel memoirs that he'd been flipping through earlier—way less boring than they sounded since they were about tramping through the jungle—and he'd just pulled out a couple of what looked like adventure books when he felt the prickling sensation between his shoulder blades of being watched. He dropped the books back on the shelf and spun around quickly.

Either his first cursory examination of the room had been lacking or Erik had come in silently because now that Alex was looking directly into one of the half-lighted nooks on the far side of the room, he could just barely make out Erik's form in one of the chairs, even if his features were still in shadow. "Oh. Hi," Alex said after a minute.

Not exactly the most creative greeting, and Erik remained silent.

"I'm just…getting a book." Erik. Afraid. Of dogs. No. He barely refrained from a visible shake of his head. He was not going there. He was especially not going there when Erik was right in front of him. He turned and picked up all four of the books he'd dropped without looking at them. "Excuse me."

Erik didn't say anything as he exited the library, and while he managed a smile and a nod when Charles passed him on his way to the staircase at the end of the hall, he kind of doubted that either had been very convincing. He made it the rest of the way back to his room without encountering any of the others, though, and with a sigh, he threw himself into one of the chairs by the window and opened the book on the top of his stack. Which, as he'd thought, was an adventure book. Unfortunately, it was an adventure book about a pack of dogs in the wilderness. Of course it was. "What the _hell_?"

He groaned and set the book aside. Firmly. And made sure that the next book that he selected was one of the travel memoirs which was good and safe and whatever because there shouldn't be any dogs wandering around in the jungle. The fact was that even if it _was_ true, nothing that Erik felt about dogs was any of Alex's business. If he had any brains at all, he'd find a way to put the whole thing out of his mind—and make sure it stayed out of his mind—and keep his mouth shut unless Erik said something. Which, given that he hadn't seen much of Erik lately, was pretty damn unlikely.

The next day started with the usual run around the grounds, and Alex hid a wince as Charles pulled alongside him on the final lap. Charles didn't look like much of a runner, but he could move faster than most people would think, and if he was pacing Alex, it was because he had something to say.

"Hey," Alex greeted, mostly because ignoring Charles wouldn't work, for once hoping that Charles was going to say something about his training.

"Hello," Charles returned. "A lovely morning, isn't it?"

"Yeah." Alex had never met anyone else—well, besides the occasional old lady—who could call a day 'lovely' and not sound like an idiot doing it, but somehow Charles managed.

"As I was saying the other day, I've noticed that you've been rather quiet lately, and you went up to bed rather early last night. Are you quite sure that you're all right?"

"I'm fine. And I didn't really go to bed that early, I just borrowed one of your books. Well, a couple of your books. I hope that's okay."

"Oh, of course, you're welcome to borrow any book that interests you. But I hadn't realized that reading was part of your usual nightly routine."

Charles tilted his head, and Alex shrugged. And hoped that Charles wasn't actively reading his mind.

"Really, Professor, I'm fine. I just…I was in solitary for a while so I'm kind of used to being on my own most of the time, and I just needed a break." It was as good an excuse as any, and it wasn't as though he _hadn't_ been in solitary for months at a stretch, after all.

"Mm." Charles nodded slightly, although Alex couldn't tell if he actually believed him or not. "Well, if there's anything that you'd like to talk about, I'm always available."

"Yeah, sure. Thanks."

They made the final turn in silence and started back towards the mansion. "Hank says that he's made a great deal of progress with the targeting system for your suit. Do you think you'll be ready for another trial run in a day or two?"

"Yeah, sure," Alex repeated, glad of the turn in conversation. Not that he was really all that eager to model more mutilated dinnerware given that there was still a sore spot on the back of his head from the last attempt—and he had no idea what Charles meant by his suit—but better that than the previous subject of conversation. Besides, he had been hanging around Hank's lab letting the guy measure and tweak and whatever lately. It made sense that he'd want to do another full test soon, and he was smart enough to know that Alex was a lot less likely to refuse the professor than him. Well, okay, Alex probably _wouldn't _have refused him this time given that Hank had been letting him hang around, but Hank didn't necessarily know that.

They slowed up as they approached the front door and headed inside for breakfast, and Alex was glad that Charles once again switched topics, this time asking about the book that Alex had picked up. It was a much safer topic than plasma blast practice, certainly safer than his current state of distraction, and best of all, Alex had read enough of the memoir to discuss it reasonably intelligently.

* * *

><p>Alex breathed out, lowering the weights to his chest. He'd been late getting to the weight set today since Hank had ambushed him after breakfast for the testing that Charles had mentioned, down in the metal bunker, but he'd still found it free. Not really a surprise considering that there were a grand total of seven people here.<p>

Today's test had included not only the chest plate but the return of the wires that went on Alex's forehead, and it hadn't gone so great—three more incinerated dummies and two more used-up fire extinguishers—but Alex hadn't been flung headfirst into anything metal, so he figured that it was an improvement over the last time. And Hank had seemed happy with whatever readings his instruments had given him, or at least Hank had wandered back to his lab muttering about recoil and displacement whatever, completely oblivious to what was going on around him, which Alex took to mean that he was pleased.

Up. And down. And up. And down. Charles and Moira were going into town later today to stock up on supplies and send another report to the CIA, and he was debating whether or not to go along with them. Sean was going since apparently there was some issue of Captain America that was supposed prove that Captain America could beat Batman and thus make him the victor in their argument, even if Alex didn't believe him, but aside from that, it wasn't like Alex had any real reason to go. He didn't have any money to spend on anything, and while eating Charles' food and sleeping in his house was one thing—at least the food and the furniture and everything were just _there_ and there wasn't any embarrassing discussion about it—he wasn't about to go asking to borrow actual money like a little kid. Especially since he didn't see any way to pay it back in the near future. And he wasn't sure that trapping himself in a car with Charles for an hour or two was a great idea either.

He finished the set and racked the weights, pushing himself up and snagging his towel before it could fall. Whatever he decided, between the plasma blast and the weightlifting, he needed to grab a shower. It didn't take long to switch the weights back and wipe things down, and then he headed out into the hall. And only narrowly avoiding running directly into Erik.

"Hey," he greeted after a moment of silence.

Stare.

Right. This was Erik.

"I'm done with the weights if you wanted to use them," he said with a wave at the door he'd left standing open behind him. "I need to go shower and let Charles know that I want to go into town with them later." Hopefully he didn't sound as awkward as he felt, but hey, at least he'd made a decision about going into town. Erik didn't make any sign of acknowledgement, and he was tempted to turn around and in walk the other direction down the hall, but that would have been just a little bit obvious so he nodded slightly and started to walk past Erik. And froze when Erik's hand caught his elbow.

Erik's attention was on his arm, and Alex winced when he realized that Erik was looking at the bruise around his bicep, currently an ugly yellow-green. He'd been trying to keep it covered, but he'd removed the sleeves on most of his workout clothes right after he'd gotten them, and while running was doable in other stuff as long as he was wearing tennis shoes and not going all-out, weightlifting wasn't.

"This happened last week?" Erik demanded.

"Yeah, when the dog…." And Alex was an idiot because if there was one thing that he hadn't planned to bring up around Erik, it was dogs. He didn't even attempt to finish the sentence.

Erik released his arm and turned abruptly. "Come."

Way back when he'd decided that saying 'hell, no' to Erik was a bad idea, but right now he was really, really tempted.


	11. There Were Dogs

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed, and congrats to those who figured out where one of the next scenes was going._

_Warning: Unpleasant backstory for Erik (Nazi-related) revealed in this chapter. I'm not sure how to work with that as far as rating, but it's not nice._

* * *

><p>Alex was reasonably certain that he was being led off through the woods to be murdered, but unfortunately knowing that he was about to be murdered didn't really tell him what to do about the situation. Well, there was always running away screaming at the top of his lungs, but Erik was faster than he was, and anyway, with his luck he'd just run in a circle and end up back in front of Erik even if Erik <em>didn't<em> chase him, so….

"Stand there," Erik ordered as they reached a flat, grassy area. "Grab my arm."

"So you can throw me into a tree?"

"If I wanted to throw you into a tree, I'd throw you into a tree. No need to ask. Take my arm. One hand, here."

"Well, that's comforting," Alex muttered under his breath—much more quietly than he'd spoken before because as much as he hadn't intended for Erik to hear the 'throw me into a tree' comment, he definitely didn't want the sarcasm getting out—but Erik was still holding out his arm, and after a minute Alex caught his forearm where he'd indicated and waited for death.

"Tighter. Now, watch."

Alex wasn't an idiot, and it only took him landing on the ground once, Erik's arm suddenly _not_ in his hand, to realize that Erik was teaching him how to break a grip. Or how to break a grip beyond just yanking away and hoping that his arm came with him, rather. It took Alex a few more minutes to come to terms with that knowledge, but Erik wasn't one to put up with a lot of distractions when he was demonstrating something, and Alex didn't like getting dumped on his head any more than any normal person. He pushed through his surprise quickly.

A couple hours later, Alex was a muddy mess, but he knew how to break even the grip of a certain ex-Nazi hunter. Well, at least if the grip was between his wrist and upper arm on his left side or wrist and elbow on his right…the same things should be applicable on either side, but Erik hadn't gotten his hand anywhere near the bruise he'd left on Alex's right arm so Alex hadn't had a chance to practice that direction yet. Of course, knowing how to break Erik's grip didn't quite tell him what to do afterwards—he was pretty sure that in a situation like the other day, the run-like-hell approach was still his best option—but it was nice that Erik had taught him. After all, Alex didn't get the impression that Erik was the kind of guy who came out and apologized for things.

The walk back to the mansion was made in silence, but it wasn't bad like the silence had been the other day. Alex could see from the ridge that the car that Charles preferred was gone, so presumably he wouldn't be going into town with Charles and Moira and Sean today, but he didn't really care. If Sean found a copy of the comic he wanted, he'd bring it back, if he didn't, there was no reason for Alex to have gone along anyway. He glanced up at Erik as they started across the lawn. "I won't tell, you know," Alex found himself saying.

Erik glanced down, his face blank.

"I mean, especially since it's not any of my business, but even if it was, I wouldn't anyway. I…." He trailed off, not quite sure where he was supposed to go from there. Man, but he was shit at explaining things. Or at least this kind of thing. He probably shouldn't have brought it up at all, except that Erik _had_ helped him today, and…. "Anyway, I just thought I should tell you that I wouldn't," he finally finished.

Erik's focus remained on him as they continued across the grounds—apparently aside from not worrying about little things like getting lost, he was immune to the possibility of tripping over his own two feet or turning an ankle in a gopher hole as well—and after a few minutes Alex found himself searching for something else to say.

"I don't like flying," he finally said. "Well, planes, technically, but it's not like I fly normally otherwise because I'm not Sean or—" He broke off before he could say 'Angel,' that wound wasn't anywhere near healed over yet, but she was the only other flying mutant that came to mind. He shrugged awkwardly. "I used to be okay with it when I went up with Dad, hell, I loved going up back then, but I guess getting cut up with shrapnel after being thrown out of a crashing one kind of messed with my head." Well, that and the whole parents dying thing, but he wasn't going there. "I even traded in the plane ticket that Charles got me to get me up to DC for a train ticket." Of course, a guy who'd been in a plane crash not liking planes was a little bit different than a guy like _Erik_ being afraid of _dogs_, but…well, turnabout being fair play and all of that.

Erik's head dipped fractionally, and after a moment, his attention returned to the mansion in the distance as silence fell again. Still no awkwardness, though, so Alex was okay with it.

* * *

><p>The weight on his arms increased abruptly, and Alex yelped.<p>

"You should have upped the weights by another five or ten pounds last week," Erik said from the doorway.

"You could have just said so; you don't need to squish me to make the point!" Alex gritted his teeth and forced his arms to full extension to rack the weights so he could sit up. "And no way that that was just ten pounds." He had a feeling that Erik had yanked on the weights—down instead of his usual up to announce his presence—and despite the fact that Erik would probably have stopped them if Alex had lost his grip, it was still uncool. Besides, Erik had been the one not talking to him last week, not the other way around.

Erik shrugged. "I just did."

Alex considered pointing out how unhelpful that was, but Erik either already knew or just didn't care. And he was kind of hoping that Erik being here today meant that things were back to normal between them so he didn't want to do anything that might irritate Erik unnecessarily, even if Erik didn't seem to be returning the favor. He pushed himself into a sitting position. "Do you want to use the weights?"

"When you finish. Are you training with Charles and Hank this afternoon?"

"Nah, not for a day or two. Apparently I blew out part of the plate last time, and the professor got the wrong kind of wiring yesterday so Hank has to go into town himself and stock up on whatever he needs."

"Hm. We'll go over the throws again, then. And your grappling still needs work." He flicked his fingers again, and two of the smaller weights lifted off the rack along the wall and floated towards Alex. "Finish your set with the added weight."

Alex didn't argue, nudging the two five-pounders into place on either side of the bar. He didn't normally lift for bulk, but he wasn't worried about handling the extra weight, especially since he only had one rep left today. Erik finally moved into the room as he laid back, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the wall by the door, and Alex took a minute to get his breathing back into rhythm before lifting the weights off the rack and lowered the bar to his chest. Up. And down. And up. And dow—

"They kept dogs in the camps."

Alex jerked his head over to look at Erik as the weight bar dipped a bit lower than he'd intended and brushed his ribcage. "What?"

Erik stared at him coolly, and he flushed.

"I…sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt." He looked back at the ceiling and extended his arms again, feeling his muscles burn.

"There were dogs in the camps," Erik repeated. "Guard dogs, they were supposed to be, but they were also trained to attack on command. There were days when the guards would amuse themselves by setting them on…well, whomever they wished. One dog or many against a group of prisoners, and they would bet on which prisoners would survive. They would stand there and laugh while the dogs…."

Alex glanced over, but Erik's eyes were focused forward towards the far wall, fixed on some horror that Alex couldn't see.

"Herr—Shaw—used to threaten to give me to them for their sport when I couldn't do what he wanted. And I was _always_ sent out with the Sonderkommando after it was done."

His jaw clenched, and Alex bit his lip slightly. "Uh, I don't know what a sonder commando is." Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut, but aside from the obvious, that the word was German, he didn't even have a guess as to what it might mean. Nothing good, obviously, but it seemed to matter as part of Erik's story.

"Sonderkommando." Erik repeated, spitting the word. "The translation…directly it would be 'special unit,' but it is what they called the men in the camps that disposed of the victims' remains."

"Remains like…?" He shoved the weights up and racked them before he could drop them on himself, and then he sat up to look at Erik.

"The bodies. The Sonderkommando took them from the gas chambers, the cells, the 'medical' building…the ones that starved in the dirt or were shot or beaten to death by the guards or were torn apart by the dogs. They were the ones that did the burning. After any gold teeth were removed, of course." Erik's eyes locked on Alex's for a moment. "When you spoke about the first time your powers manifested, you said that you couldn't describe how horrible the smell was. You were right; nothing smells so bad as burning human flesh."

Alex swallowed hard, praying that his breakfast would stay down, and he was almost glad when Erik looked away again.

"I was sent out with them often, but Herr Dok—_Shaw_—" and this time he nearly spit the correction, "thought that the times the dogs killed made particularly good object lessons. Leather collars."

The reasoning there was pretty obvious, leather collars meant no metal that Erik could use to defend himself, a lot like with the collie the other day, and Alex kept his mouth shut mostly because he had no idea what to say.

"I saw what those animals could do. The rips, the tears, bones stripped and cracked…." His eyes snapped back to Alex's. "I will never like a dog."

"Got it," Alex said. As much as he kind of wished that he didn't because while he could understand—well, empathize with, anyway; he doubted that anyone who hadn't been there could really understand—Erik's horror, and his fear of dogs suddenly made a lot more sense, Alex could have lived without knowing that Erik really would kill puppies. "I'm sorry," he added after a minute. Erik's eyes narrowed, but Alex wasn't sure what else he could say. It didn't do a damn bit of good, but…well, he _was_ sorry.

"Finish your set," Erik ordered.

* * *

><p><em>Author's note: I shoved some of Magneto's actual backstory in here; Max EisenhardtErik Lensherr actually _was_ a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz. Of course, Shaw had nothing to do with it because he's from Pennsylvania and never had a damn thing to do with the Nazis, but First Class totally ignored that fact so I have to as well. And I believe Erik's fear of dogs is entirely mine rather than canon since I don't remember that from any of the comics (although offhand I can't remember him ever encountering a dog either, so at least I don't think I'm directly contradicting anything)._


	12. A Lot of Running

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed. _

_Almost done here…I'm not going quite all the way to the beach divorce since I'm still getting headaches with some of _these_ characters having been forced together without throwing in Shaw's side of the equation. (I mean, Riptide? Seriously, Riptide? Did they just roll the dice and pick mutant names/powers that they liked?) I will get close to that, though, since I like the Blackbird Model 1._

* * *

><p>Alex grinned and bounced to his feet. "I win!"<p>

Erik snorted, rolling to his feet as well. "And while you gloat, your opponent will be quite happy to take the opportunity to stab you in the back."

Alex rolled his eyes. "Can I please just have my victory?" It wasn't like he'd do it in a real fight, but it was rare that he beat Erik at anything, and he'd certainly never pinned him in a grappling match before. "Just this once?"

Another snort, and then Erik glanced up at the sky before waving an arm and making his knife jump back into his hand. "We'd best get back or we won't have time to get cleaned up before dinner."

Alex couldn't quite banish his grin as he began to lope back to the mansion alongside Erik. Erik didn't usually let him end a day on a win, either. Of course, it _was_ getting late, but….

Things had gotten pretty much back to normal between them, and Alex was more glad about that than he ever planned on admitting. Erik hadn't said anything since that day in the weight room about dogs or the Nazi camps or anything even vaguely fear-related, and Alex wasn't about to bring it up, but they were back to sparring most days. And, even better, Alex wasn't furniture.

Erik paused at the top of a ridge, and Alex stopped beside him. "What is it?"

"Which way now?"

"What?"

"Which way back to the mansion?"

"I don't know. I was just following you."

That got a decidedly superior look, and Alex scowled. He should have seen this coming. It wasn't that Erik didn't _usually_ let him end the day on a win, Erik _never_ let him end the day on a win.

"That way," he said, throwing his arm out in the general direction that they'd been going. He had no idea if he was right, but Erik he had no doubt whatsoever that Erik would keep staring at him until he said _something_, so….

Erik's superior look didn't fade. "If you want to go by way of China, I suppose."

Alex glared at him, put what little knowledge he had of world geography to use, and turned in the general direction of the mansion. "Okay, fine. That way."

"More likely to bypass it and end up in Canada."

For a moment Alex debated pointing out how annoying Erik could be, but it was bad enough that Erik had decided to rub his nose in the fact that he couldn't navigate his way out of a paper bag without irritating him into dumping Alex on his head too. "Well, that's better, at least. Will you at least tell me when I bypass the mansion?"

"Eventually." One shoulder twitched. "I told you, you should be running another few miles every day anyway." He gestured forward. "Well? Unless you want to miss dinner."

Oh, screw getting dumped on his head. "You know, you're kind of evil."

* * *

><p>Alex couldn't hide his grin at Hank's pat on the back as they exited the bunker, even if he wasn't about to admit out loud that the geek's approval actually meant anything. Especially since half of his approval—more than half, most likely—was probably because he was still in once piece and hadn't been blown apart by a misaimed plasma blast.<p>

Alex still couldn't quite believe that Hank and Charles had willing stood there when he'd opened fire. Hell, he was still in shock that he'd _let_ them. He might have been picking off the center mannequin reliably enough in the last few trials, but there had been some collateral damage in every single one of them as well, and it had been a crazy thing to risk. It had worked, sure, but…. He shook his head slightly and then shook it again in dismissal when Hank looked at him questioningly. Whatever they'd all been thinking, it _had_ worked, so no point in going into it now.

Charles had been far more vocal with his praise for Alex's performance than Hank, but that was the professor. It had been nice to hear too, though, although his own excitement had been high enough that Alex had missed most of the actual words. Oh, he still wanted another couple trials before he'd be willing to call himself solid on it since this could have just been his adrenaline working for him for once, preferably trials where his friends weren't involved, but suddenly whole plasma blast thing was seeming a little more handle-able.

Charles had left the bunker while they were still cleaning up mannequin remains—Charles' supply had to be running low at this point although he had yet to say anything about it—but Alex didn't think twice about following Hank to the lab after the ash was swept away. He'd spent enough time there to feel reasonably comfortable, and it only took a minute to hook the plate up to the machine that downloaded the sensor's readings since he'd helped with that before. He was opening his mouth to ask about what was coming out when Raven stuck her head into the room.

"Hey, Alex, Erik's looking for you," she said.

"What?" They'd lifted together this morning, but Erik had known he'd be working with Hank and the professor this afternoon. Even if, for some bizarre reason, he didn't remember Alex mentioning it, Hank had been talking about his new modifications all through lunch.

She shrugged. "I don't know, but he's out on the terrace. Hey, uh, Hank, I could use a hand with this thing. Do you think maybe…?"

The geek tripped over his words agreeing, flushed to the tips of his ears trying to correct himself, and then hurried out of the room after her, and Alex snorted and followed. Some things would never change.

The terrace was something that Alex could actually identify, and it didn't take him long to reach it. "Hey," he called as he approached. Not that he thought that Erik hadn't noticed him coming already, but it didn't hurt to be sure.

Erik turned back towards him and away from whatever he'd been studying on the skyline. "So how did your test go?"

Some of Alex's excitement returned at the question, and he felt a smile tugging at his lips as he hurried over to Erik. "I did it. I hit the mannequin, and I didn't kill Hank and the professor."

"A great feat of willpower. Although I wasn't aware that killing Charles and Hank was an option."

Alex shook his head quickly. "No, I was working with the latest version of Hank's targeting system, and I finally killed the mannequin in the middle and didn't fry chunks of the ones on either side of it at the same time. Except in this case there were no mannequins on either side, it was Hank and the professor."

"Hm." Erik's forehead creased, but he turned to stare out over the grass before Alex could figure out what his expression meant. "Well, that's good."

Alex scowled. "You know, you could at least look at little happy for me."

Erik glanced back at him again, now with far too many teeth in evidence. "Better?"

"No, now it looks like you want to eat me." Erik's expression faded into vague amusement, and after a minute, Alex shrugged. "So I didn't know we were going to be sparring this afternoon. Thought we were going to hold off until tomorrow."

Erik shook his head. "I don't think we have enough time for a lesson before dinner, but I thought we'd go for a run."

Alex groaned. "You're going to get me lost and tell me to find my way home again, aren't you?" Not that he really needed to ask, Erik had been doing that for the last week after all of their sparring matches, but…. "Come on, you know I'm never going to get it. Can't I keep my good mood a little longer?"

Erik shook his head and reached for his knife sheath, and Alex tensed. Erik had never cut him—had never even shown any indication that he might cut him, despite some of Alex's earlier fears—but there was no good reason for him to be pulling his knife now when they were safe at the mansion.

It wasn't a knife that Erik tossed him, though, it was something that had been attached to his knife sheath, and Alex frowned as he caught a watch.

"I thought we'd try something else today," Erik said.

"Making me _see_ how late I'm going to be getting back for dinner?"

"Look at the face."

Alex frowned down at it for a moment, trying to figure out what Erik meant, before he realized that while there were three hands on the watch, they weren't quite the normal three hands . The hour and minute hands were obvious enough, but the third…. His frown deepened. The third hand wasn't ticking off seconds like he'd expected. In fact, it wasn't moving much at all. He looked back up at Erik. "Is this a compass too?"

Erik's head dipped in agreement. "I'd hoped your sense of direction would develop, but—"

Alex snorted, not even waiting for him to finish. "That'll be the day." He could have told Erik that that was a hopeless plan a week ago and saved them both a lot of headache. And a lot of running.

"My thoughts as well," Erik admitted. One shoulder twitched slightly. "I saw Charles in passing when he was looking for Sean, and he mentioned that you had a good day today—although he didn't mention that his getting incinerated would have been the result if you had not—so it seemed appropriate."

"It's for me to keep?"

"Well, it's of no use to me. You know how to use it?"

"Yeah, sure." Dad had taught him how to read a compass a long time ago. Alex ran a thumb over the face and grinned slightly, fastening it on his wrist before glancing up again. "Thanks."

Erik nodded to the lawn. "We'll start out going north."


	13. To War

_Second to last chapter (probably)! Like I said before, I'm not going quite to the beach divorce, but I'll at least get them into battle. Thanks to everyone who has been reading and reviewing._

_Some of the dialogue/scenes in this chapter was taken directly from X-Men: First Class. If you recognize it, it's probably not mine._

* * *

><p>Erik knocked Alex to the ground for about the fiftieth time thus far today and then straightened. "Better."<p>

"Compared to what?" Erik shot him a superior look, and Alex rolled his eyes and stuck out a hand to be pulled up. It was always a gamble doing that since Erik—

A hand closed around his arm and yanked him up with enough force to send him stumbling forward.

—since Erik had a habit of doing _that_, but Alex had been expecting it and caught himself before he went down yet again, this time face first.

"Which way?" Erik asked.

"What?"

"It's time to get back," Erik said. "Which way?"

"What?" Alex repeated, frowning. Usually Erik tossed him in the dirt way more than he had today before calling an end to one of their sparring lessons. Hell, you could still tell that his sweat suit was supposed to be grey at this point.

"Charles has something that he wants me to try this afternoon so we need to go back early," Erik said.

It was more of an explanation that Erik usually offered, and Alex tilted his head. "Do you know what kind of something?"

"I have no idea." Erik held out his hand, and his knife jumped out of the dirt and into his palm. "Something for training, I presume, but he didn't say what." He shook his head, adding after a moment, "And I'm not sure what good it will do when you consider that he wouldn't even shoot me the other day."

"Um…right," Alex said after a moment. "Major character flaw right there. I mean, who wouldn't want to shoot his best friend?"

Erik looked vaguely surprised at Alex's comment—then again, this was Erik; he probably had a standing desire to shoot everybody, just on principle—and then shook his head and tucked his knife back into its sheath. "I could have stopped the bullet."

"Then what was the point of having him shooting you?"

Erik glared.

"Just asking," Alex muttered. He consulted his watch before Erik could say anything else and then jabbed his finger between two of the trees. He was damn sure that that wasn't how Erik had led them _into_ the clearing, but then, that was pretty much normal for Erik. "That way." Erik's glare didn't lessen, so he assumed that he'd gotten it right for once, and gestured again. "Well, should we go?"

Erik left him by the kitchen entrance with an order to make sure that he did an extra set with the weights before dinner, and since he'd finished the sparring session less than a total mess for once, Alex knocked enough of the dust out of his clothes to keep him from being a menace to the carpeting and headed upstairs to do just that.

"Hey, man," Sean greeted from the bench as Alex turned into the room, arms extended over his chest.

"Hey," Alex returned. "Taking a break from sonic practice?"

"Yeah, the professor had something he wanted to try with Erik, and I wasn't about to hang around to see what. Besides, I think I've pretty much got things under control now. I just need to keep practicing."

That was pretty much the same situation that Alex was in with his plasma blasts, and he nodded. "You mind if I hang out here until you're done?"

"Fine by me, but I just started so it'll be a little bit."

Alex shrugged and dropped down to sit by the door. "No hurry." There wasn't much point in him taking a shower and getting changed if he was just going to get sweaty again right after, and lunch hadn't been _that_ long ago so he didn't really have anywhere else to be. Well, he could go bother the geek in his lab, but he wasn't really in the mood for a science lecture at the moment, even if Hank didn't annoy him quite as much as he used to.

Sean had just finished and Alex was stuffing his watch in his pocket in preparation for getting his turn when Hank suddenly burst into the room. "There you are. I've been looking for the two of you everywhere. Come on, the president is about to make his address."

"The president?" Sean asked, looking over at Alex.

Alex shrugged and hurried out of the room after Hank, for once not even bothering with the weight bench. If the president was addressing the whole nation _now_….

Charles was dropping down to sit on the couch with Moira when they arrived, and Alex shifted in just behind Erik's shoulder while Hank and Sean took the space on the other side of Raven.

"…to regard any nuclear missile crossing the embargo line that surrounds Cuba as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States," the president was saying. "Requiring a full retaliatory response on the Soviet Union."

Erik gestured at the television. "That's where we're going to find Shaw."

"How do you know?" Alex asked.

"Two superpowers facing off and he wants to start World War Three," Charles said, shaking his head slightly without taking his eyes off the television. "He won't leave anything to chance."

"So much for diplomacy," Erik said, and then he turned to look back at Alex and the others. "I suggest you all get a good night's sleep."

He left the room on the heels of that statement, and Alex's gaze followed. Unlike the others, he'd spent a good portion of his childhood on military bases, and while he didn't have Erik's more…direct…experience, he did think that he understood better than most of them about what might be coming. It was one thing when they'd just been talking about fighting Shaw—although it was hard enough to process that _that_ was suddenly happening and the training they'd been doing in their own little world here at mansion was going to put to the test out in reality—but the idea of the whole country and maybe even the whole _world_ going to war too….

Moira said something about needing to check in with her superiors and got up to leave the room, Charles following, and after a moment Hank excused himself as well with a mutter about something that he needed to finish. Raven looked like she wanted to follow, but for once she didn't, heading off in the other direction, and Alex looked at Sean. "I guess…." He trailed off with a shake of his head. He didn't know what he guessed.

"Yeah," Sean said quietly, and then, "My dad fought in Korea. I mean, he never talked about it with me, but I remember him going."

"Mine too," Alex said. "And World War II before that."

"Oh. Yeah, you said he was a military pilot so I guess he would have."

"He never really talked about it at home either," Alex said after a moment. "But then again, I guess I was just a kid back then." He shook his head. "I can't believe this is _real_. I know this is what we've been training for, but tomorrow we're going to war." And then maybe everyone else too, as much as he didn't want to think about that.

Sean nodded, and silence broken only by commentary from the television that neither of them were really paying attention to held for several minutes before, "Do you want to play cards or something?"

The question should have been absurd, but since Alex couldn't think of anything else to do in the hours stretching between now and whatever time they were leaving—after all, it wasn't like he had a family to contact or anyone who gave a damn about him outside of the little group at the mansion—he nodded. "Yeah. Sure."

* * *

><p>Alex was awake well before the sun—he wasn't sure he'd slept at all, really—but he stayed in bed staring up at the darkened ceiling until his alarm finally indicated that it was time to get up. If the others had managed to get any sleep, he wasn't going to be the one to disturb them. He wasn't sure that they had, though…Sean came out of his room to head down to breakfast at the same time that Alex did, and Moira and Raven were entering the kitchen just in front of them. And Charles and Erik were already there.<p>

"Where's Hank?" Raven asked with a frown, taking the seat beside Charles.

"Probably in the lab," Charles said. "I talked to him for a few minutes when I took him dinner yesterday, and there was something he was determined to get finished. He's been very busy lately."

"Oh."

She sounded vaguely uncomfortable although she didn't say anything else, but since Alex had far more important things to worry about at the moment than the geek's love life, he didn't press. Instead he dropped down into the seat beside Erik, and although Erik didn't even glance at him, he did shove a bowl of oatmeal unceremoniously in his direction. After a moment, Alex added some sugar and picked up a spoon. He didn't really _want_ the oatmeal, and he wasn't really sure that he was going to be able to keep it down, but going into battle hungry probably wasn't a great idea either. And he hadn't eaten much for dinner last night.

Hank still hadn't put in an appearance by the time they'd all finished choking down what they could, and by common consent they headed for the lab together. There were no sounds coming from inside, only a note on the door, and after scanning it, Charles pushed the heavy door open. To reveal an absolutely trashed lab. Things smashed, overturned, glass on the floor….

"What the hell happened here?" Erik murmured.

It was what Alex was wondering as well, and he shook his head slightly as he took in the carnage. Hank had left the note on the door so he must be okay, but what could have upset him badly enough that he'd trashed his lab?

None of the others answered Erik either, probably because none of them had an answer any more than Alex did, and they slowly followed Charles through the wreckage to a box marked with an 'X'. Charles threw the top open, and it only took a moment to take inventory of the contents.

"Hank has been busy," Erik said with a slight smile.

"Do we really have to wear these?" Alex had to ask, distracted for a moment from the mess around them. Okay, yeah, the whole uniform idea was kind of cool, but still…yellow?

"As none of us mutated to endure extreme G-force or being riddle by bullets, I suggest we suit up," Charles replied.

The uniform wasn't _quite_ as bad as he'd expected when he had it on, Alex decided. Okay, yeah, the colors could still use some work, but at least the plate for harnessing his powers was built right in. And he didn't look any more ridiculous than any of the others.

They took one of the larger cars down to the hanger, and it wasn't until they were passing beside a flight of jets that Alex realized abruptly that they would be _flying_ to their destination. Why it hadn't occurred to him before he had no idea, obviously they weren't going to be hitchhiking to Cuba, but….

He didn't even register when Charles parked the car, and it wasn't until Sean stuck his head in front of Alex's face and asked if Alex was coming that he realized that the others had already left the vehicle. "I…yeah," Alex said with a shake of his head. "Sorry, I was just thinking." It was a crappy excuse and he knew it, but fortunately most of Sean's attention seemed to be elsewhere because he only nodded. Alex fumbled with the seatbelt for a moment before managing to extract himself from the vehicle, and then he and Sean hurried into the hanger after the others.

The craft inside the was cool, even Alex was willing to admit that, but even if it didn't look like any other plane he'd ever seen it was still a plane, and he wasn't at all sure that he'd be able to bring himself to board.

"Where's Hank?" Raven suddenly asked again.

No one answered for a moment, and then, from the shadows, "I'm here."

Alex was about to make a smart remark about that being a good thing since none of the rest of them could possibly _fly_ the plane when a figure began to come forward. The voice was right, and so was the too-tall frame, but the build of the figure approaching…. Alex squinted into the light, trying to get a clearer picture, and then turned to Erik, hoping that someone else would confirm what he was seeing. Erik looked as shocked as he was, though and Alex couldn't decide whether that was good or very, very bad.

"Hank?" Charles asked.

The figure was suddenly fully visible, and Alex found himself staring because the only familiar thing about him was the glasses. The rest of him had suddenly developed blue fur, a heavier muscle structure…blue fur.

"It didn't attack the cells," he said. "It enhanced them." He shook his head, looking down. "It didn't work."

Alex had no idea what he was talking about—Hank had somehow done this to himself?—but Raven spoke before he could say anything.

"Yes, it did, Hank. Don't you see? This is who you were meant to be. This is you." She reached out to touch his face. "No more hiding."

"You never looked better, man," Erik said quietly, slapping Hank's arm lightly. And then gagged as a furred hand wrapped around his throat without warning, lifting him skyward, and Hank bared his teeth.

"Hank!" Charles said.

"Don't mock me!" Hank snarled.

Alex stood frozen in shock. Hank had attacked somebody. Hank had attacked Erik. Erik hadn't ripped him apart yet. Somehow none of that would compute, and although his mind was screaming at him to _do something_, he had no idea what. He couldn't shoot Hank, if Erik couldn't break his grip he certainly wouldn't be able to….

"Hank, put him down immediately, please," Charles ordered, somehow managing to sound calm. "Hank. Hank!"

Hank dropped Erik suddenly.

"I wasn't," Erik growled, looking up from a crouched position on the ground as he caught his breath.

"Even I got to admit that you look pretty badass," Alex found himself saying, trying to diffuse the situation. "I think I got a new name for you." And if he was very lucky, it was a name that wouldn't get him choked out. Erik pushed himself back to his feet beside Alex, and Alex shrugged. "Beast."

Hank growled slightly but didn't actually object.

"You sure you can fly this thing?" Sean asked from behind Alex.

"Of course I can," Hank said, turning towards him, and suddenly the Hank that Alex was used to was back. And clearly a little offended that someone might question his technical prowess. "I designed it."

"Well, then, we should be going," Charles said.

Hank nodded and did something that caused the plane to open, and the others stepped forward. And Alex froze.


	14. Into Battle

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed, as well as to everyone who has been following this story since the beginning. This is the end; you can either imagine the beach divorce (it should fit) or substitute your own happier ending._

_Quite a bit of the dialogue in the second part of this is taken from First Class…as usual, if you recognize it, it's not mine._

* * *

><p>The others crowded around Hank as he did something that caused a steep, narrow stairway to fold down from the underside of the plane, but Alex remained where he was. Mostly because his legs weren't going anywhere. He figured that he had a few more minutes before anyone noticed since the stairway wasn't moving very quickly, but eventually they were all going to board and there was going to be no help for it.<p>

Something gave a light tug on his wrist—or on his watch, rather, he realized—and when he glanced back up, he wasn't surprised to find Erik's eyes on him. Well, if he couldn't bring himself to walk onto the plane, Erik could probably drag him on by his watch and chest plate and the buckles on his uniform, at least. The fact that Alex actually found that encouraging was disturbing, but with everything else going on, it wasn't as disturbing as it probably should have been.

The stairway finally landed on the floor of the hanger with a light 'thunk,' and Hank made his way up first, with Sean—

Alex tilted his head curiously, momentarily distracted from his trepidation, but it didn't look like Hank's mutation had given him an actual tail. So Sean wasn't _literally_ on Hank's tail, but he was crowding behind, obviously eager to get inside. Then again, complaints about being shoved off a satellite dish aside, Sean wasn't likely to have a problem with flying.

Charles and Raven were right behind him, for once Charles too focused on something to notice the unease in one of those around him, and Moira brought up the rear of the group.

There was another tug, firmer this time, on his wrist, and Alex closed his eyes. He didn't have to fly the plane. Hank did. And Hank might be a geek, but Hank was a geek who could always do the things that he said he could do. He wasn't going to have to parachute out of the plane. No one was going to have to parachute out of the plane. Besides, it would be embarrassing as hell if Erik really did have to drag him on board.

Alex gritted his teeth and made himself take a step forward. All he had to do was sit still and keep his mouth shut and wait until they got to their destination. Then he could get _off_ the plane and do his damn job, and if all went well, maybe Charles would let him take a cruise ship back. Another step.

He took a third step forward, and then a fourth, and then he was standing beside Erik at the bottom of the staircase. The others were paused, listening to Hank explain something—something about a modified Blackbird prototype from the snatches that Alex could make out—and he reached for the handrail.

It was like crossing the hanger, one step up and then two, and then Erik stepped up behind him effectively cutting off his escape route. Alex would have turned back and glared at him, but not only would Erik have ignored him, he would have had to turn back around to face the plane afterwards. It was better if he just kept going.

Hank had moved on to explaining some of the cockpit controls to Moira and Sean when Alex reached the top, but Charles and Raven had already slipped past and were buckling themselves into the seats along one side. Alex started to take the third, only to pause as Erik caught his arm and nodded towards one of the seats on the opposite side. Alex didn't much care where on this deathtrap he was buckled in on so he didn't object.

Erik took the seat beside him, and Alex couldn't decide whether it was reassurance or just Erik making sure that he wouldn't be in front of Alex if Alex lost control of a plasma blast.

Sean took the third seat beside Raven as Hank and Moira buckled themselves into the pilot and co-pilot seats, and then Alex sucked in his breath as the engines rumbled to life.

Hank's plane was bigger than most of the ones that he'd been in before, but it was also considerably more powerful, and it was only a few minutes after Hank pulled it out of the hanger that they were lining up for takeoff. Sean, Raven, and Charles were all craning their necks so they could see out the small windows—Erik was too, even if he was trying to pretend that he wasn't, Alex noticed when he glanced to the side—and Alex tightened his hands a little. Just breathe. It would be fine.

* * *

><p>Hank's plane was fast, too, they reached Cuba long before Alex had expected, and despite his reservations he found himself craning his neck for a look at the fleet when Hank announced that it was coming into view.<p>

"Looks pretty messy out there," Hank added.

Charles put his fingers to the side of his head and closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he looked resigned. "The crew of the _Aral Sea_ are all dead. Shaw's been there."

"He's still here," Erik insisted. "Somewhere."

Charles didn't respond. "He's set the ship on course for the embargo line."

"If that ship crosses the line, our boys are going to blow it up," Moira said. "And the war begins."

"Unless they're _not_ our boys." Charles put his fingers to his temple again.

A few seconds later they banked hard with no warning, and Alex reached up and grabbed the headrest as Charles yelled 'Hold on!'

The plate on his uniform pressed back against his chest as Hank roared and their plane rolled further, and then there was an explosion audible even inside the plane.

"A little warning next time, Professor?" Hank asked, glancing back over his shoulder as he brought them more-or-less upright again.

"Sorry about that," Charles said, and then his fingers went back to the side of his head. "You all right?"

Raven nodded and Sean gasped out a 'yeah,' although Erik kept silent. So did Alex, but that was mostly because he was still trying to draw air back into his lungs. And not because Erik had used his chest plate to pin him even more tightly than the harness. It wasn't hard to figure out what had happened—Charles had somehow made the Russians blow up their own ship—but he really hadn't been prepared for aerial acrobatics.

"That was inspired, Charles," Moira said.

"Thank you very much, but I still can't locate Shaw."

"He's down there. We need to find him _now_."

Erik practically ground out the words through tight jaws, and Alex turned back towards Charles hoping that he had an idea.

Charles looked forward. "Hank?"

"Is there anything unusual on the radar or scanners?" Hank asked.

"No," Moira reported. "Nothing."

Charles lowered his fingers from his temple and shook his head.

"Well, then, he must be underwater," Hank said at the same time. "And obviously we don't have sonar."

There was silence for a second and then Sean's head lifted. "Yes, we do."

"Yes, we do," Charles echoed, but it wasn't until he and Sean and Erik slipped out of their harnesses that Alex realized what they meant. And that Sean was going to have to jump out of the plane for it to work.

"Hank, level the bloody plane!" Charles yelled as he and Sean struggled towards the back.

The plume of fire from the targeted ship was still visible out the window as Hank did as he asked, and Sean's 'Whoa, you back right off' to Erik would have been amusing under other circumstances. Especially since Erik actually stepped back with his hands raised. But Sean's next words were 'Beast, open the bomb bay doors,' and there was nothing funny about it when the sound of air rushing past the plane suddenly became much louder.

"Remember, this is a muscle," Charles shouted to Sean over the roar, touching his throat. "You control it! You'll be in here the entire time!" He tapped his head. "We'll see you soon. On my mark: three, two, one, go!"

Sean dropped away, and if it wasn't for the fact that Charles had his fingers against his temple and didn't look the least bit concerned, Alex would have panicked.

"Alert the fleet, they may want to take their cans off," Moira said into her headset.

A moment later Charles straightened slightly. "Banshee's got a location on Shaw." He looked at Erik. "You ready for this?"

"Let's find out." They moved towards the front again, coming to stand over another set of doors in the floor, and Erik stripped off his gloves as Charles pulled the panel away to reveal the landing gear. Erik stepped down onto it, and Charles yelled for Beast to lower the wheels.

The plane slowed and then stopped—Alex marveled for a moment at a fixed-wing that hovered, prototype or not—and then Erik's head disappeared out of sight and Charles knelt to crouch over the opening.

Nothing happened for several minutes, and Alex wondered if Erik would really be able to do whatever Charles was thinking, and then Raven's eyes widened as she stared past his shoulders. "What the hell?"

"What?" Alex twisted to look over his shoulder, and then it was his turn to stare as he saw a submarine being dragged slowly up into the air. He'd known that there would be a submarine, and he'd known that Erik could move metal, but he hadn't known that Erik could lift submarine-sized metal into the _air_. He'd figured that Erik would just be trying to surface the submarine so the fleets would have a target, and even that seemed like a stretch.

The plane began to move forward again, dragging the submarine along with it, and then something moved on the top of the submarine. Air? No, that was water, Alex realized. A funnel of water. And it was growing.

"Erik, take my hand!" Charles shouted suddenly, flattening himself against the floor of the plane

"Hold on, guys," Hank called. "It's going to get bumpy."

Alex turned to face forward again as the funnel of water—now fully tornado-size—shot towards the plane, and then he grabbed the headrest again as the plane spun wildly. He thought he heard a faint crash a moment later, but it was hard to tell over the roaring.

"Erik, take my hand!" Charles screamed again. For a moment Alex didn't understand why Charles was repeating the order—Erik was, for all intents and purposes, welded to the landing gear and probably far more stable there than Charles was lying on the floor—but then he realized that with the strength of the wind shear they probably weren't going to _have_ landing gear for much longer.

Alarms began to scream and fire was visible out the window over Raven's shoulder, and Alex suddenly saw a parachute being shoved at him and his mother hugging Scotty. "Not again. Not _again_."

He hadn't meant to speak out loud, but fortunately none of the others noticed as Charles shouted something unintelligible down at Erik. The sight of the landing gear flying past the window and off into the fire snapped Alex back to the present, but Erik had managed to reach Charles' hand, and apparently Charles was stronger than he looked because a few seconds later he was hauling Erik back inside.

Alex didn't even have time for relief as the plane inverted abruptly, he was afraid they'd lose both of them right back out the landing gear hatch if the roll continued, but Erik pinned Charles to the ceiling under him and held them in place as the plane flipped again. And then the plane struck the island and kept rolling, and Alex suddenly didn't care that he was yelling. Everyone else was yelling too.

After far, far too many times around they finally came to a halt, and Alex tentatively opened his eyes to find himself hanging upside down in his seat. Raven, still buckled in as well, was starting to look around too, while Erik was lowering himself and Charles to the floor.

"Moira? Moira, are you all right?" Charles asked, pushing himself up off Erik and hurrying towards her as Erik moved to release Raven.

"Yeah, I'm okay," Moira said.

Alex fumbled with his harness, but his fingers wouldn't cooperate, and it was a relief when the buckles simply fell away with a flick of Erik's fingers and he was able to let himself fall out of the seat.

Hank joined them a moment later, and Alex felt almost grateful for the hand—paw?—that pulled him to his feet. His legs were cooperating about as well as his fingers right now, and he was willing enough to shift to stare out the windows with Erik and Raven and Hank. From there he had the side of the plane to lean against.

"I read the teleporter's mind," Charles said. "Shaw's drawing all the power out of the reactor. He's turning himself into some kind of nuclear bomb."

"We've got no time, the Geiger counter's going out of control," Moira said.

Charles nodded slightly. "All right, Moira, this is what we're going to do. Get on the radio and tell both fleets to clear out immediately."

"I'm going in," Erik said.

"Beast, Havok, back him up," Charles ordered as three of Shaw's team—one of whom was Angel, Alex realized with a sense of betrayal—exited the submarine to stand facing the Blackbird. "Erik, I can guide you through once you're in, but I need you to shut down whatever it is that's blocking me. And then we just hope to God that it's not too late for me to stop him."

"Got it," Erik said, turning for the exit. Which was currently the gaping hole at the end of the plane, and Alex was very glad that he hadn't noticed that before. Hank followed him, and Alex pushed himself away from the side of the plane and ordered his legs to cooperate. He could have a meltdown about surviving yet _another_ plane crash later; right now he had a job to do.

Charles yelled a 'good luck' after them and then something else at Raven, but Alex missed most of it as he hurried to catch up with Erik and Hank.

Erik's eyes were sweeping the landscape outside the plane when Alex joined him and Hank, and there was an odd combination of focus and hatred in his eyes that made the look Erik had given the collie seem downright pleasant. Right now that was reassuring, though; if there was anyone that Alex would want to follow into battle, it was Erik.

"Don't wait for them to make the first move," Erik ordered, sparing the two of them a glance. "This is a war."

"Got it," Hank growled as Alex nodded sharply.

"And Shaw is _mine_."

Like Alex was going to argue that one. He'd already seen Shaw in action once; Erik was welcome to him. And frankly, the sooner Erik got to him the sooner this would be over and they could all go home. He nodded. "Let's do this."


End file.
